South Korean film “Heavy Snow” depends a lot on the presence of its two lead actresses. Whenever they are together on the screen, they click well with each other all the time in addition to ably filling their rather under-developed parts with each own star quality, and it is a shame that the movie does not provide enough ground for their fairly good performance.

The movie begins with a little performance act by Soo-an (Han Hae-in), a performing arts high school student living in some rural city on the east coast of South Korea. The early part of the story focuses on Soo-an’s accidental friendship with a newly transferred student named Yoon-seol (Han So-hee), and we come to gather that Yoon-seol is a young celebrity actress currently taking some break from her busy acting career.

When Yoon-seol later suggests that they should go to Seoul together on one evening, Soo-an initially hesitates, but she and Yoon-seol eventually go to Seoul by Soo-an’s car. Although it is after midnight when they arrive in Seoul and the streets are already quite empty, Yoon-seol and Soo-an are happy and excited to spend time with each other, and that is when they come to sense a certain mutual feeling between them.

However, Soo-an is not so willing to go further with Yoon-seol after they impulsively kiss, and then something unexpected occurs not long after that. With no particular reason, Yoon-seol leaves the school, and this certainly upsets Soo-an, who belatedly comes to realize that she was really attracted to Yoon-seol from the beginning.

The middle part of the story moves forward to several years later, and we see how Soo-an looks different now. She now becomes celebrity actress just like Yoon-seol once was, and she seems to be enjoying her advancing acting career, but it is soon apparent that she is not so happy behind her confident appearance. In the middle of one night, she spends some time at the residence of a male friend of hers, and she does not say no at all when he offers drugs to her, but then she gets a bit too high due to some very strong drug she instantly takes without any hesitation.

Anyway, Soo-an soon finds herself suddenly overwhelmed by the memory of a local beach visited by her and Yoon-seol. That prompts her to return to her hometown, and, what do you know, she discovers that Yoon-seol has actually lived there since she quit acting some time ago. Now mostly occupied with surfing on the beach, Yoon-seol does not show much attention to Soo-an when they come across each other at a local bar, and the mood between them becomes pretty awkward to say the least.

Nevertheless, Yoon-seol does not reject her friend at all, and Soo-an tries to get closer to Yoon-seol despite the estrangement between them. Just like her friend, she tries to get interested in surfing, and we later see her going to the beach along with Yoon-seol when lots of waves are coming upon the beach on one foggy day.

And then the screenplay by director/writer Yun Su-ik starts to baffle us in one way or another. Not long after Soo-an and Yoon-seol attempt a bit of surfing together, they suddenly find themselves stranded in the middle of the sea, and then they are swept to some remote spot on the coast. Having no idea on where the hell they actually are, they only find themselves getting lost in a nearby forest area covered with a lot of snow, though they eventually manage to find a small cabin where they can stay at least for a while.

As they are hopelessly stuck in that cabin, Soo-an and Yoon-seol gradually come to face the old feelings between them as opening themselves more to each other, and the movie becomes more like a stream of feelings in their unconsciousness. Sometimes they simply feel happy to be with each other despite their current isolated status, and we even get a little intimate private moment between them later in the story, though we are not so sure about whether they actually go further than that.

Unfortunately, the movie does not provide enough detail and substance to the story and characters. We never feel like getting to know them more even at the end of the story, and the finale is rather hollow without much emotional resonance. In the end, all we get is a random series of lovely scenes filled with dreamy qualities, and they sadly lack a coherent emotional line we can hold to the end.

Anyway, the movie is thankfully short in running time (87 minutes), and Han Hae-in and Han So-hee do their best for carrying the film together. Considering this is basically a two-hander, the movie could bring more flesh and personality to their characters in my inconsequential opinion, but these two beautiful young actresses are still engaging to watch nonetheless, and several young female audiences who happened to be around me during my viewing will probably agree to that.

On the whole, I am not so satisfied enough for recommendation, but “Heavy Snow” shows the considerable potential from both its two lead actresses and their director at least. Although observing their efforts from the distance, I appreciated their efforts to some degree, and I can only hope that they will soon do something more interesting than this trial.