Immigration and Embracing Gray Areas in Past Lives’ Romance

*Spoilers for Past Lives (2023) and the ending of La La Land (2016) in this article.

I would not call myself a fan of the romance film genre, but wow, do I respect its recent hustle. 

Romance is as dramatic and compelling as it is because of its denial of existing desire, where common obstacles and challenges include a deal-breaking difference in class, race, and sexuality. Recently, modern advancements in gender equality that have standardized and promoted women’s independence have created a new challenge. A woman’s aspirations, typically regarding her career ambitions or personal interests, are now a central part of her life and must be balanced with other commitments, such as her relationships. And so, this newer romance trope uses aspiration and ambition as its primary conflict with love. 

La La Land (2016) is one such example of a recent romance film which famously centers its conflict around this kind of trope.

Two artists, Mia and Sebastian, trying to find success in Los Angeles, fall in love but eventually go their separate ways because of the demands of their blossoming careers. The film ends with a dream sequence that shows that even if the couple had stayed together, Sebastian would have to sacrifice his opportunity to make it big so that he could support Mia’s journey to success. This montage communicates that not only are love and career ambitions in conflict, but that they are also mutually exclusive. 

Unfortunately, there is little gray area in this approach to the romance trope. There is no version of Mia and Sebastian’s story where they could both have the career they dreamed of and stay together. The tragedy of the film lies in this absoluteness. 

So, in Past Lives (2023), Celine Song introduces a new experience. 

Like herself, Song’s main character, Nora, is an immigrant. While the general discourse amidst mass audiences has mostly focused on her intense romantic relationships, Past Lives never forgets that Nora is an immigrant, and this colors her entire journey within the film.

In the beginning of the film, when discussing the decision to immigrate, Nora’s mother reasons, “If you leave something behind, you gain something too.” Song employs this hopeful mentality of change to define the oxymoronic nature that immigration demands and that this romance trope should too. To write this new experience into the trope, Song begins and ends with the character at the center of the romance: Nora. 

Past Lives follows Nora through zodiac-cycle-separated chapters of her life. Besides watching how her romantic relationships develop, we also see where Nora’s relentless chase of her dreams as a writer takes her. 

After immigrating to Canada, Nora then goes to the United States to further her education. We follow her to graduate school, then to an artist residency, and finally to work.

When Nora and her childhood love, Hae Sung, reunite, he recounts that she used to want to win the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer. He then asks what she wants to win now. At first, Nora responds with dismissal, saying she hasn’t thought about those kinds of things recently, but after giving Hae Sung’s question some thought, she says she wants to win a Tony. Hae Sung laughs and comments that she hasn’t changed at all. 

Nora is and always has been ambitious—or, according to her own description, “still psycho”—and this ambition to pursue her writing aspirations is, quite literally, what makes her an immigrant. Because she is chasing her dreams and is an immigrant, we witness how Nora is experienced in negotiating her life as it comes. 

She leaves behind her childhood love in Korea, and then her family in Canada, to end up in the United States to become a professional writer. She calls home frequently, and reconnects with Hae Sung online.

She meets her husband, Arthur, at a writer’s retreat, and marries him early for a green card to stay in the States. She does what she needs to live the life she wants, and that destroys and builds her up. 

During her more vulnerable and private conversations with Arthur and Hae Sung, we are allowed into some insight into Nora as a character. Lying in bed with Arthur, reflecting on their life together, Nora shares, “This is where I ended up. This is where I'm supposed to be. (...) This is my life. And I'm living it with you.” Later, at the bar, the night before Hae Sung returns to Korea, he tells Nora, “But truth learned, you had to leave because you're you. And the reason I liked you is because you're you. And who you are is someone who leaves. (…) To Arthur, you're someone who stays.” 

All the decisions and events that have led her here, every moment she has stayed, every moment she has left—Nora takes ownership of how she has navigated her life. And though she may succeed, and though she may grieve, as we see her weep into Arthur’s arms after Hae Sung leaves, they are in equal and simultaneous measure.

And so, this becomes the romance in the film too. While La Land Land and other romance films utilizing this classic trope (i.e., every Hallmark movie where a working woman must decide between the love of her life or her career) present an “all-or-nothing” dilemma, the romantic conflict in Past Lives is more so a tension of gaining and losing, characterized by Nora’s immigration journey. 

The negotiation required of immigrants to survive and flourish is a reflection of possibility, of gray areas, of other lives—what we could have done, what we could do now, and what we could do later. There is no one version of our story. We are always a work in progress. 

The ending of the film isn’t to say that Nora has completely and forever lost true love, but rather the bittersweetness of how relationships unfold over a life. Something that is ever-gray and never definite, and always gives and always takes, Song draws the parallels between immigration and love.

In Past Lives, the undercurrent of immigration beneath Nora’s relationships and aspirations shows that the realization of love and aspiration is not necessarily its fulfillment but simply the pursuit of it that takes us to new places and people. Love can be anything we make of it. 

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” 

But I think we’ve heard that one too many times. Watch Past Lives instead.