by Gabby Goss
There are no words that can quite capture the absolutely soul-crushing feeling of heartbreak. It’s painful in the most gut-wrenching and destructive way possible, and can knock you down so bad that, sometimes, it’s hard to fathom a world in which you will ever recover.
There are few ways to console you or account for the loss you have experienced.
Movies can get pretty close, though.
As I write this, I am deep in the throes of a twenty-something heartbreak myself. Finding solace in break-up films has been a lifeline; practically the one way I can imagine a world on the other side of this deep devastation.
The words, “I will forever grieve for the life that we might have had” will stick with me forever. Spoken by Florence Pugh in A Good Person (2023), I still recall feeling the weight of a doomed on-screen romance as I watched it crumble before my eyes.
In the film, Pugh’s character Allison breaks off her engagement in the wake of her involvement in a car accident that killed her brother and sister in-law. I interpreted her decision as a way to avoid facing guilt yet also as a means of self-sabotage and punishment.
She never fell out of love with her fiancé Nathan, but rather held such deep love and care for him that she could not drag him into her lows. There’s something tragically sweet about this couple who were dealt a tragic hand. The ephemerality of their love makes it all the more beautiful, precious, and rare.
Past Lives (2023) presents a similar trope of star-crossed lovers. After protagonist Nora moves from South Korea to America and is torn away from her childhood love Hae Sung, he returns to visit her more than 20 years later.
Nora has been married to another man for years, and thus she is emotionally torn by the arrival of the man who could be her soulmate. In the end, she does not pursue a romance with Hae Sung but is visibly distraught by his departure. Nora is left to perpetually wonder what she and Hae Sung might have been.
There is integrity, though, in Nora’s commitment to her marriage. While it is sad for her to let go of a former flame, her resistance to infidelity represents her deeper understanding of the lasting impact that a past love has on people. The value of a romance does not lie in the form it takes in the present, but the impact it leaves on who you are.
So, for Valentine’s Day this year, I propose a toast to all the might-have-been, right-person/wrong-time, and coulda-woulda-shoulda couples of the film world. Here’s to the ones who almost made it. The beauty of their fleeting love will last forever within mere frames of the cinematic universe.
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