Review of Past Lives, directed by Celine Song

I’d known about this movie for a bit because of my job—I work as a film and television critic over at MovieWeb, and we cover movie news. I tend to cover the festival circuits whenever I get the chance, and I never was able to see a movie like Past Lives in time.

So when I was planning a two day trip up to New York City to visit my friend, who would be working one of the days, I ended up having to find some things to do in order for me to be entertained until we saw a Broadway show. I ended up looking on the AMC app, realizing I had some out of state visits left for the year, and decided I was going to see Past Lives by venturing all the way up to Lincoln Center.

I was dead set on seeing this movie while in New York, and man I’m glad I did. The small theater was packed with people despite it being a 3 PM matinee, and that was the perfect way to see it.

Everyone was riveted by it, and one older couple was even crying by the end. This was such a good movie—I will say upfront that I think this is one of the best movies of 2023 so far. And I’m not saying that because I’m a Teo Yoo fangirl sometimes.

Onwards with the actual review!

Nora meets Hae-sung, her childhood friend and crush, for the firs time in many years.

Past Lives begins in South Korea, when Nora, the protagonist, attends school there. Her family, which consists of her mother, father, and young sister, is preparing to immigrate to Canada, but she has some unfinished business before she goes.

She’s close with her classmate Hae-sung, who is also a neighbor, and Nora tells her mother that she has a crush on him.

Her mother and Hae-sung’s mother arrange the fact the two should go on a date, they do, and there’s a quick scene where they hold hands in the car before parting ways. Nora immigrates to Canada, and twelve years later, she ends up moving to New York City in order to try and become a playwright.

Hae-sung is looking for her on Facebook, posting on her father’s film pages, and the two reconnect. He teases her by trying to figure out what prize she’s after next, as she would cry when she lost to him as a child. Here she says the Pulitzer Prize.

A romance begins between the two as they’re acting like a long-distance couple, but when Nora gets accepted into a residency, she tells Hae-sung she cannot talk to him anymore. Both are gutted about it, and at the residency, she meets a white male playwright who she hits it off with.

One key line comes across here: she tells him about inyeon, or the belief in reincarnation and fate. Hae-sung heads to China to learn Mandarin and finds a girlfriend despite being massively depressed about Nora.

Twelve more years pass. Nora is married to the white playwright, and Hae-sung and his girlfriend break up. Hae-sung decides to go to New York City and see Nora for himself, in an attempt to see if what they had was real.

Nora and her husband have some reservations about this, but she decides to meet Hae-sung anyways. The two end up going to Dumbo, where there’s a scene with some sexual tension when they’re on the subway, and sit together. She tells him that her husband and she went here once, and ultimately ends up chatting with him about his girlfriend.

They continue to meet, and they end up going on a Statue of Liberty boat ride together. Nora’s husband wants to meet Hae-sung, so she brings him home to their apartment in the village. At first, it’s awkward, as Hae-sung barely knows any English, and her husband is busting out the very few broken Korean phrases he knows.

There’s tension before this scene as the night before, Nora and her husband have a chat about whether Nora is truly happy with him and their life, and she doesn’t seem convinced herself. Lots of philosophical musings here about whether she belongs in America or feels in-between it and Korea.

The three go to a bar. Her husband is increasingly left out of the conversation, as Nora and Hae-sung are speaking Korean, but the two end up chatting about inyeon.

He seems to have accepted by this point their fates were not intertwined in the way he thought originally, but the movie does end up on an open note. He points out how much he likes her husband and was expecting to like him this much, then says it’s basically inyeon that brought them all together here in this moment. After this, it’s time for Hae-sung to head off to the airport after stopping at their apartment.

The open note ends up being Hae-sung saying that Nora might not be his inyeon right now, but maybe in a future life she might be. I interpreted this as a potentially romantic gesture, but also it could be platonic. I wasn’t too sure on this one, if we’re going to be honest, especially after seeing her reaction.

Nora bursts into tears in her husband’s arms, who was waiting on the stoop with a cigarette, and that made me think she may be seriously contemplating it as well. I do think they’ll keep in touch sporadically, but it could also be the complete ending for their story.

Overall Thoughts

This was such a gorgeous movie. Visually, the cinematography was striking, but the characters felt so real. It’s not a movie for everyone due to the sheer amount of deep and philosophical conversations going on throughout the film, but I think it’s an important. Inyeon is the key motivator behind everything in the movie, and what we leave behind when we start a new life.

Nora is modeled after the director’s own life and immigration to Canada I presume, which makes this so much more heartfelt. I think the casting was absolutely perfect for this movie as well—although I found it hilarious when Teo Yoo was speaking broken English.

That was too unbelievable for me simply because I knew the actor. But I absolutely adored this movie, and I would definitely watch it again.

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