Winter in Sokcho Review: An Atmospheric Slow-Burn Story of Familial Bonds and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City
Inspired by a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of the city of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the French-speaking employee is compelled to chaperone the enigmatic author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Disruption
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Mi-hyeon Park), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Gong Do-yu), an hopeful model gunning for a relocation to the capital. However this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider 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 extract the account of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a vent – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Thematic Depth
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and release. We witness only her internal world, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with details of his past. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her needs on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Visual style – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s vocation, it feels a bit separate from the main story, like the enigmatic wrapped guest also in residence.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The trio of strong acts at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-involved Park – give Winter in Sokcho its emotional anchor, and if Kamura doesn't fully thematically corral the cautious standoff between innkeeper and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Fixating on absence, threatening to succumb in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
