What would you do if, one morning, you woke up and saw a stranger sitting on your bed, claiming to be your future spouse?
Or… What if you woke up next to someone you thought was gone forever, but was actually still here, the one you once loved most?
SORE: Istri dari Masa Depan (or in English would be Sore: Wife from the Future) is a romantic drama built on the premise of time travel.
The story follows Jonathan, an Indonesian photographer living in Croatia, who one day wakes up to find a stranger sitting on his bed, a woman (Sore) who claims to be his wife from the future.
Sore tells him that she came from the future to make his life better and asks him to obey everything she says. Jonathan, confused but intrigued, follows her lead. Not knowing that behind her calm presence lies a desperate attempt to save him from a tragic future: his own untimely death.
Here’s the major spoiler: this isn’t Sore’s first time meeting Jonathan.
She has done this hundreds of times, reliving the same moments over and over again. Waking up next to him, trying different ways to change him, to make him listen, to save him.
Each time she fails, the loop resets.
Whenever she tells Jonathan the truth, that he will die eight years from now because of heart attack, or whenever she says she wants to give up and start over, Sore herself dies and wakes up again in the same moment: beside the man she loves, who has no memory of her at all.
At first glance, many would assume that Sore suffers from a savior complex, trying to change Jonathan’s fate, controlling his choices, and insisting that he follow her every instruction.
I thought the same. For a while, I believed that her persistence came from a need to save, to fix, to be the hero in someone else’s story.
But as the story unfolds, and especially toward the end, I realized something deeper: Sore wasn’t acting out of a savior complex. She was grieving.
And there’s a major difference between the two.
A savior complex stems from a desire to feel needed, to validate oneself through the act of saving others. Grief, on the other hand, is about loss, and the desperate wish to undo what has already happened.
Sore wasn’t trying to be a hero. She was trying to cope. To not lose Jonathan… again.
She tried her best to change Jo’s life. Stopped him from smoking, drinking, pushed him to eat better, exercise more. Hoping that these changes would somehow rewrite his fate. Maybe, just maybe, Jo would live longer.
But here’s the thing: a person won’t change unless it comes from within.
Sore had to go through that time loop hundreds, maybe thousands of times before she finally realized… That it was arrogant to think we can bend someone’s life just to create a version of the future that we want. Change doesn’t work like that.
That was her first turning point.
The real shift came when she finally stopped trying to fix Jo, and started listening to him. When she stopped pushing her version of what “better” looks like, and simply sat with his truth.
That’s when she saw it: The boy who was left by his father at the age of four. The boy who thought he wasn’t chosen. Who grew up thinking he wasn’t loved. Who locked his father inside one single moment of mistake, and never let it go. And maybe that pain became a lens through which Jo saw the world: broken, unfair, and not worth trying for.
Sore eventually discovered this not from guessing, but because one day, she decided to confront him. And Jo (FINALLY)snapped. He poured out everything he had buried inside for so long: his resentment, abandonment, and deep-rooted belief that he was unloved, unchosen, and forgotten since his father left him at the age of four.
Sore felt grateful for that. Because for the first time, Jo opened up. That confrontation became a turning point not just for Sore, but for their relationship.
It reminded her (and us?) that communication matters. That sometimes, being vulnerable doesn’t make you weak. In fact, it gives the people who love you a chance to really understand you. Because love isn’t about guessing each other’s pain, it’s about sharing it.
After learning the truth, Sore kept trying. This time she tries her best to make Jo meet his father, hoping that confronting this past would help heal the deep trauma he carried since childhood. There was still hope lingering inside her to change something, to “save” Jo, or at least rewrite his ending.
But this time, it was time itself that wouldn’t allow it.
And that’s what made it so frustrating. Not just for Sore, but for us as viewers. Because even after understanding what Jo truly carried inside, neither Sore nor we really knew what was wrong. If given another loop, we’d still be lost, unsure what to fix beyond racing against time and hoping for a different outcome.
But after watching until the end, I started to see it differently.
Maybe that’s not the point. Maybe time didn’t let Sore go any further, not because she failed, but because it wasn’t her role or place to do so.
That the loop wasn’t there just to “fix” Jonathan, but to help Sore realize and come to terms with her own grieving. Sometimes, a second chance isn’t about changing the person or rewriting the future. It’s about gaining a new perspective, understanding what has happened, processing it, and finally accepting it.
Up to this point, these are basically the main points I want to make about the movie, but of course it wouldn’t feel complete if I don’t continue this writing until the movie’s ending.
Since this is a love story (and it’s a movie), of course there’s a kind of magic there (and I actually love it lol). A miracle born from the depth of Sore’s grieving and love for Jonathan. That love is what reversed time, and eventually brought Jonathan back to the time before he met Sore.
In this parallel universe, Jonathan becomes aware of himself in a new way. There’s a feeling of longing he can’t quite explain. And more importantly, he finally completes his own journey, changing his habits, living healthier, and even making peace with his father.
One thing he says stands out: people don’t change because they’re afraid, but because they are loved.
And I think that’s a beautiful and fitting way to end the story.
Actually, there are several psychological points I picked up from the movie, especially regarding what Sore did to Jo from the perspective of behavior modification. What she tried, why it didn’t work, and so on. But I guess that’s a topic better saved for a separate post. Maybe I’ll dive into it more when I feel like yapping again XD
So, how about you? If you could go back to the past and change your decisions, would you take the chance?