Winter in Sokcho Analysis: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Tale of Family and Closeness in a Korean Frontier Town
Inspired by a novel by Swiss-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet bracing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she lingers uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a move to Seoul. But this comfy routine is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a vent – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions erupt in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of bodily suffocation and liberation. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and sparing with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is intentional – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s parent and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. But in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Cinematic Craft
The three focused performances at the core – an almost hostile Roschdy Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the cautious standoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
Winter in Sokcho can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.