I Missed You (2021) Review: Love, Regret, and the Goodbyes We Never Said

 

I Missed You | 2021 | 1h 40m
Original Title: Wo Mei You Tan Di Na Chang Lian Ai (我没有谈的那场恋爱)
Genre: Romance | Country: Taiwan
Directors: Chih-Yen Hsu, Mag Hsu | Writer: Mag Hsu
Cast: Kang Ren Wu, Eve Ai, Meng-Po Fu
IMDb: 5.6
My Rating: 9/10

Bringing two people from her past back into her life forces Chin Chin to confront the truth behind the sadness and unhappiness she has been carrying and hiding all these years.

Warning:

Contains mild language and alcohol.

How many people have we blocked, ignored, or deliberately removed from our lives because we were hurt—and how many of those decisions might we regret years later?

That is the thought that stayed with me after watching I Missed You (2021). At first, it feels like a light romantic film about people reconnecting with someone from the past. But the longer I watched it, the more I felt that the story was really about regret, ego, and the consequences of closing a door before we fully understand what happened behind it.

Chin Chin (Eve Ai) works as a data analyst at a game company and is under pressure to quickly analyze data for a new game. Ironically, the game is a psychological game centered on love, which brings back memories of her own experiences and makes her question love itself.

Chin Chin has become known as a cold and workaholic person. I can understand why she behaves that way. She seems to use work and emotional distance as a shield for the wounds she has never really dealt with.

She has already cut two important people from her past out of her life: Nan Chih Yang (Wu Kang Ren), her stepbrother, and Chao Shu Wei (Fu Meng Bao), her best friend and the man she loved.

Then something happens that makes it impossible for her to keep ignoring the past.

Chin Chin receives a package from Chih Yang, who believes that he does not have much time left to live. Inside is a tablet containing his final messages. After watching the videos, Chin Chin begins to waver. She eventually decides to meet Chih Yang.

She also accidentally meets Chih Yang's ex-wife and learns more about the life he has actually been living.

For the first time, Chin Chin begins to consider opening her heart to Chih Yang again. But then something else catches her attention. When she tries to unblock Chih Yang on Facebook, she realizes that she has also cut off communication with Shu Wei for years.

She decides to unblock Shu Wei as well and searches for information about his life. As she looks through his posts, old memories begin to return. So do the painful truths she has spent years trying to avoid.

And eventually, regret comes with them.

Can Chin Chin finally make peace with her past?

What I find most interesting about I Missed You is how relevant the story feels, especially for people in their thirties and forties who are becoming increasingly absorbed in their careers. Sometimes life becomes so focused on work, responsibilities, and survival that we suddenly realize there is an emptiness we have been ignoring.

Then the questions begin.

What happened to the people we left behind? Did we make the right decisions? Did we really understand what happened before we walked away?

I think many of us can relate to Chin Chin's habit of cutting people off after being hurt. When someone causes us pain, blocking their number or social media account can feel like the easiest way to protect ourselves. We remove the person from our daily lives and tell ourselves that we are moving on.

But I Missed You reminds me that ending communication does not necessarily mean ending the emotional consequences.

Sometimes, we only learn the truth much later, when there is no longer anything we can do about it.

That idea makes the story feel much more painful to me than a typical romance.

The film also handles its storytelling quite well. The plot moves back and forth between different periods, but I can still follow the emotional development. The timeline may shift, yet the story remains systematic enough for the pieces to gradually connect.

I also appreciate how the film balances its emotions. There are moments that are genuinely entertaining, but there are also moments that are painful enough to bring tears. The emotional changes do not feel completely disconnected from one another.

The music plays an important role too. One of the original songs used in the film was recognized with the Best Original Film Song award at the 2021 Golden Horse Awards, which feels understandable because the music fits the emotional atmosphere of the story so well.

The characters are also interesting, particularly Chin Chin and Chih Yang. On the surface, they seem very different. But the more I watched, the more I noticed that they actually share something important: both are carrying regret.

Their lives affect each other in ways that are not always obvious at first, and I like how the film gradually shows their character development from beginning to end.

The acting is generally good as well. Eve Ai, however, feels slightly less convincing to me, especially in some of her facial expressions. Chin Chin is supposed to come across as cold and emotionally guarded, but sometimes her expression does not feel strong enough to fully communicate that personality.

Even so, I can understand the limitation because I Missed You was Eve Ai's acting debut after being known primarily as a singer-songwriter. Considering that, I still think her performance is fairly good, particularly in the more emotional scenes.

And there is one scene that I found particularly painful.

#Spoiler. Chin Chin breaks down in tears after learning the truth about Chao Shu Wei, the friend she had loved all along. For five years, she had cut him off completely without knowing what had actually happened to him.

By the time she learns the truth, the opportunity to change the past is already gone.

This is probably the scene that affected me the most because the sadness does not come only from losing someone. It comes from realizing that the loss might have been accompanied by five years of unnecessary silence.

Her regret is enormous.

I also think this is where Eve Ai's performance becomes more convincing. The emotion finally reaches the level needed to show what Chin Chin has been holding inside for so long.

The line, “Actually, even if that man didn't love me, I still should have said goodbye properly,” feels incredibly important in this context.

Sometimes we think that only mutual love deserves a proper ending. If someone does not love us back, we may think there is no reason to explain ourselves, say goodbye, or leave the relationship with care.

But maybe closure is not only something we owe to ourselves. Sometimes it is also something we owe to the person who once mattered to us.

That is what I take from I Missed You.

The film is a light romance, but the message underneath it is much more serious. We are reminded to love ourselves not by refusing to admit our mistakes, but by having the courage to acknowledge them. We are also reminded to appreciate the people who are still part of our lives and to think carefully about how we leave when a relationship has to end.

Not every relationship needs to be repaired, and not every goodbye is a mistake. But I Missed You makes me think that there is a difference between consciously choosing to leave and allowing anger or pride to make that decision for us.

Overall, I find I Missed You (2021) an enjoyable romantic film with a meaningful emotional core. The story is engaging, the characters develop well, and the film turns a simple idea about reconnecting with the past into something more reflective.

What stayed with me most is the possibility that some regrets are not created by what we did, but by what we failed to say while we still had the chance.

Perhaps that is worth remembering before we close the door on someone for good: when you look back years from now, will you be at peace with the way you left—or will you wish you had said goodbye differently?

(Aluna Uwie)

Had been published in Alunauwie.com

"This article was originally written in Indonesian and has been adapted into English for international readers."

 

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