Sokcho in Winter Analysis: A Moody Slow-Burn Story of Family and Intimacy in a South Korean Border City

Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this elusive yet refreshing drama follows hotel employee Sooha (Kim Bella) as she drives author from France Yan (Roschdy Zem) to the DMZ just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also camps in a liminal space of the soul, with Sooha, abandoned by her French father while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. After the francophone hostess is compelled to accompany the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Everyday Existence and Upheaval

When she’s not digging into spectacular-looking seafood cooked by her fishmonger mother (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model gunning for a relocation to Seoul. But this familiar rhythm is overturned when the foreigner takes up residence for a extended visit. At first conforming to her prejudices about rude French men, he proves, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Coming to Sokcho in search 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 something else.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s subterranean feelings surface in flashes of clandestine, winding moments of physical constraint and liberation. We are privy to only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, insisting on his solitary principles and sparing with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this one-sidedness prevents Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both pushing cosmetic surgery on her – is evidently a key theme for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit separate from the main story, like the mysterious bandaged diner also in the guesthouse.

Performances and Directorial Approach

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, increasingly scattered Kim, and the self-involved Park Mi-hyeon – provide Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite narratively contain the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is always on his toes emotionally speaking, often dipping into a physical, sensory imagery. Fixating on absence, on the verge of drown in subjective feelings, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of modern ghost story.

The film is available on Mubi from November 7.