Winter in Sokcho Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a Korean Border City
Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing film follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she escorts author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a no man’s land of the soul, with Sooha, left behind by her father from France while she was still unborn, trapped between dual heritages. After the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uncomfortably between strained companionship and complex desire.
Everyday Existence and Upheaval
When she’s not digging into visually stunning seafood prepared by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to Seoul. However this familiar rhythm is disrupted when the foreigner takes up residence for a long-term stay. At first conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be acclaimed graphic novelist Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he manages to extract the story of Sooha’s absent parent from her. She spies on him through a air duct – but the question lingers whether he’s a proxy father, or another figure entirely.
Emotional Landscape and Symbolic Layers
Sooha’s buried emotions surface in bursts of secret, winding moments of bodily suffocation and release. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a distant figure, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his past. His cipher status, as Sooha imposes her desires on to him, is intentional – but this imbalance prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and control, with Sooha’s parent and partner both pushing plastic surgery on her – is clearly a central idea for Kamura. Yet despite Yan’s profession, it feels a bit adjacent to the main story, like the mysterious wrapped guest also in the guesthouse.
Performances and Directorial Approach
The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Roschdy Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura doesn't fully narratively contain the cautious standoff between hotelier and guest, he is consistently on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a tactile visual register. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura creates an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.
The film can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.
