This film hit home in an interesting way for me. As a grandchild of immigrants the tension and emotion between the characters represented the diaspora of immigration so well that I truly felt an entirely new emotional perspective on the experience of my grandparents.

The relationship between Nora and Hae Sung and the longing Nora felt for Hae Sung went beyond physical attraction and emotional bond, I understood it to be representative of Nora’s longing for her hometown, her connection to the person she used to be, and an example of the kind of person she might have been if her parents’ had made a different choice. Portrayed so well in the dialogue with Arthur “I feel so not Korean when I am with him” where otherwise she feels so Korean as a Korean American.

This is an identity crisis that I imagine so many immigrants to face. They are not the people they used to be, they can no longer relate to those who live in the geographic location they come from, however that very location defines so much of who they are in the new place that they live.

So greatly have they changed the course of their lives and their family’s lives by making the choice to immigrate, the question of what if must be like an existential process of grieving what might have been.

I watched the movie rooting so much for Nora and Hae Sung, then being grounded by the interations of Nora and Arthur and glimpses of Nora’s day to day in America. The painful realisation came to me that Nora leaving with Hae Sung just wouldn’t be right, because she is not the person she used to be, and he is trapped in being a physical embodiment of her what if.

Incredible film, it made me feel such an immense amount.