Writer and Director: Yun Su-ik
The perils of love denied, a missed opportunity shapes the lives Su-an and Seol when they meet at school and aren’t brave enough to explore their connection. Written and directed by Yun Su-ik, this mournful film explores the feeling of loss and its consequences, punctuated with periods of happiness as the pair reunite across several years. Musing on the impact and pressures of fame on young women in particular – both characters are actors – the expectations of beauty and the desire to be free of external pressures, Heavy Snow has a teasing quality that leaves the central couple and the audience slightly unfulfilled.
When famous actor Seol transfers to Su-an’s school, they share performing arts classes and soon discover an irresistible connection that leads them on a number of adventures in the city. When Seol makes her feelings clear, Su-an resists and years later regrets her reticence as the rejection hangs over them both when Su-an seeks Seol out to make things right.
Yun’s movie develops the initial relationship well, a tentative love story between two people navigating the uncertainties of their lives. Su-an (Han So-hee) is always the more unknowable and it is never clear whether her reluctance is shyness or concerns about her sexuality, making Seol the more interesting of the pair from the start. There is both confidence and a melancholy in Han Hae-in’s performance as Seol pursues the relationship she wants without fear, a sprightly personality and eagerness to be wild, but the burden of her beauty, of the expectations imposed on her by the film industry feels compelling even though the audience never see her in that world.
As the tale unfolds, the connection becomes more poetic, relying on a shared interest in surfing and a beach they once went to that becomes a continued meeting point later in their lives. But the film starts to lose traction as the central relationship becomes less tangible. Without establishing why Su-an stepped back from Seol, her later obsession with finding her former love and the ways in which it shapes her life are harder to believe or invest in.
Yun’s penultimate act is a smart one, a moment of pure fantasy happiness that seems strange in the more fractured context of the film, but it makes sense in Heavy Snow’s final chapter, a brief addendum that completes the trajectory of both characters in a way that feels satisfying, particularly for Seol whose more structured story has been better seeded from the start.
Heavy Snow is a short film at less than 80-minutes and might have benefited from spending a little more time on evening-out the perspectives to give a little more insight into Su-an’s position and how later fame starts to change her view on happiness and how to hold onto it.
Heavy Snow is screening at BFI Flare 2024 from 13-24 March.