Winter in Sokcho Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Tale of Familial Bonds and Closeness in a Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this subtle yet refreshing film centers on guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives French writer Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Director Kamura's debut film also camps in a no man’s land of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still unborn, caught between dual heritages. After the French-speaking employee is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between tetchy friendship and complex desire.
Daily Life and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is lolling about with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an hopeful model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about rude French men, he turns out, after an online search, to be acclaimed comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s missing father from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but it remains to be seen whether he’s a surrogate parent, or something else.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in bursts of clandestine, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan stays a distant figure, insisting on his loner ethic and stingy with particulars of his history. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s vocation, 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 nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between innkeeper and guest, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to drown in subjective feelings, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.
The film is available on Mubi from 7 November.
