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

Based on a novel by Korean-Swiss writer Elisa Dusapin, this subtle yet bracing film follows guesthouse worker Sooha (Bella Kim) as she drives author from France Yan (Zem Roschdy) to the demilitarised zone just north of Sokcho. Metaphor alert: Koya Kamura’s debut film also resides in a liminal space of the spirit, with Sooha, abandoned by her father from France while she was still in utero, trapped between two cultures. Once the francophone hostess is compelled to chaperone the mysterious author, she loiters uneasily between strained companionship and Oedipal attraction.

Daily Life and Upheaval

If not enjoying spectacular-looking marine dishes cooked by her mother who sells fish (Park Mi-hyeon), Sooha is relaxing with her boyfriend (Do-yu Gong), an aspiring model aiming for a relocation to the capital. But this comfy routine is disrupted when the outsider settles in for a extended visit. Initially conforming to her biases about impolite Frenchmen, he turns out, on Googling him, to be critically lauded comic book writer Yan Kerrand. Arriving in Sokcho in pursuit of inspiration, he succeeds in prise the account of Sooha’s absent parent 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.

Inner Turmoil and Symbolic Layers

Sooha’s buried emotions surface in flashes of secret, sinuous moments of physical constraint and liberation. We witness only her inner life, though; Yan remains a remote presence, upholding his solitary principles and stingy with particulars of his history. His enigmatic role, as Sooha projects her desires on to him, is deliberate – but this imbalance hinders Winter in Sokcho from fully opening up. Aesthetic expression – and restraint, with Sooha’s mother and boyfriend both advocating plastic surgery on her – is evidently a central idea for Kamura. Yet in spite of Yan’s profession, it seems a bit adjacent to the main story, like the enigmatic bandaged diner also in residence.

Acting and Cinematic Craft

The three focused performances at the centre – an nearly aggressive Zem, progressively unmoored Bella Kim, and the self-absorbed Park Mi-hyeon – give Winter in Sokcho its solid centre, and if Kamura can’t quite thematically corral the wary faceoff between hotelier and visitor, he is consistently on his toes in terms of feeling, often exploring a physical, sensory imagery. Obsessing over emptiness, threatening to succumb in internal sensations, Kamura musters an intriguing kind of contemporary phantom tale.

The film can be seen on the streaming service from 7 November.