I love how this movie is a small meditation on closure and moving forward. We’ve talked a lot about how this movie deals with time but not in the sense of how it changes us and propels us forward.

I first saw this movie at a film festival and got to attend a Q&A with Celine Song the writer and director and she talked about how Nora is mourning the little girl that Nora has left behind in Seoul.

There's a lot of discussion about how Nora is not the same 12 year old girl Hae Sung once loved. She comments to her husband how she's had this picture of Hae Sung as a kid in her head for so long and that she thinks he still sees her as the little girl in Seoul, but she's a completely different person now and so is he.

We're constantly seeing action play out from a distance, through windows, or in a reflection. We're not seeing the *actual* person much like Hae Sung with Nora. He sees an image reflected back that isn't in line with the person who is actually standing with him.

There are several lines that talk about how we gain something when we leave something behind. Nora has done that. She has dreams and aspirations and has given up a lot of herself to get them--her old name, her sweetheart, even her handle on the Korean language is rusty. She is not the same person because of what she's given up, but it is not a bad thing. It's just different. And that's what makes this movie all the more gut wrenching. Nothing about these changes are bad or evil or malicious. It's just how life went.

This moment with Hae Sung allows her to dip her toe back into that world, to reconnect with who she once was, and hopefully let her go.