Past Lives

Past Lives is a film of extraordinary emotional precision. Writer-director Celine Song, drawing on her own experience, has created something that feels both intimately personal and universally resonant. The premise is deceptively simple: Nora and Hae Sung, childhood sweethearts separated when Nora's family emigrates from South Korea to Canada, reconnect over Skype twelve years later, then meet in person after another twelve years, when Nora is married and living in New York. What Song does with this setup is nothing short of miraculous.

The film's genius lies in what it refuses to do. It never reduces its triangle to melodrama or forces its characters into dramatic confrontation. Instead, it sits with the ache of roads not taken, the way our choices create and foreclose entire possible lives. Greta Lee is extraordinary as Nora, conveying oceans of feeling in the smallest gestures, while Teo Yoo brings heartbreaking earnestness to Hae Sung. John Magaro, in what could have been a thankless role as Nora's husband Arthur, delivers one of the film's most affecting scenes with a quiet monologue about being the person standing in the way of a great love story.

Keith Fraase's editing and Shabier Kirchner's cinematography work in concert to create a rhythm that mirrors the experience of memory itself, lingering on moments that might seem ordinary but contain entire emotional worlds. Past Lives is a film about the Korean concept of in-yun, the idea that even the briefest encounter between strangers is the result of thousands of years of connection. By its devastating final shot, you believe it.