It’s hard to believe Past Lives is Celine Song’s debut film, but here we are. Before watching, I decided to revisit some of the initial mythos the film carried when I first encountered it in 2023— a few debates with friends about its ‘simplicity’ and a hunt for someone they knew that ‘would actually enjoy it’—I had been excited to understand why it had been dismissed as ‘insipid’ or ‘cold’. I wanted to see what the lack of fuss was truly about.
The film surrounds romantic relations between three characters. Still, I would hesitate to consider it a ‘love triangle’ by any means—something that didn’t become apparent until the film’s final act. At the centre is the protagonist, Nora ‘Na Young’ Moon. Nora’s character becomes debatably halved in an emigration from Korea to Canada. Reflectively, the film is bilingual in Korean and English.
We are introduced to Nora’s first love interest, Hae Sung, in Seoul. Both children’s mothers organise a date for the two. Nora’s mother explains this is an intentional ‘happy memory’ for Nora to look back on. She delivers the line “If you leave something behind, you gain something too,” which cuts through the entire film.
Hae Sung and Nora’s digital reconnection occurs around 12 years after. The trajectory of the film appeared predictable from the pair’s first Skype call—At least it did to me as someone who consumes way too much of the ‘temporal romance’ genre. I particularly thought the recommendation by Nora to Hae Sung to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—a meta act of emotional violence—validated the association between this film and the melancholic, existential romance formula.
The constraints of the formula suggest the two will inevitably separate and meet under different circumstances. They’ll hold the same feelings now, complicated by new marital statuses. Yet, the film will culminate, despite the way their lives have diverged, with their love superseding all factors. It’s Song’s subversion in the coming section that truly has me in a chokehold, but more on this section first because there’s a lot to like. I loved the montage of Skype calls.
The couple talk about their plans following the call, their living situations and what time of day it is in each country— the real intimacy of the conversations lies in the shifts these mundane actions undertake to accommodate the relationship. It’s an example of the polarising ‘quietness’ of the film’s intimacy. Woven into the montage is the actual fate of the couple, foreshadowed in the mirror of one line: ‘Why would I go to New York?’ And the latter echoes, ‘Why would I go to Seoul?’
The film’s third act, taking place around two decades into the future, introduces the third element of the relationship: Nora’s husband, Arthur. As Nora’s husband, John Magaro gives what is honestly my favourite performance of the film. Magaro’s facial expressions and tone of voice alone invoked a wincing guilt in me. The empathy his performance wrenches makes you feel complicit when Hae Sung re-enters Nora’s life and, indirectly, enters Arthur’s.
The final reconnection tends to be the crux of a romance; it’s natural to await an inevitable catharsis, hinging on the couple the audience has grown attached to being fated to be together, or coming to understand that such an outcome would have been the right one. I think a large part of the film’s diversion from this fate is its kindness to the third person in the triangle: Nora’s husband.
The “coldness” attributed to the film stems largely from its final act— this is in part the brilliance of cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, whose contemplative, static and uninterrupted takes create a large part of the film’s emotional texture. I feel sick in a scene where Hae Sung and Nora do nothing but wait for an Uber.
It’s in this phase of quiet reconnection that the film’s emotional realism is on full show, and in most cases, it feels repressive. Arthur is, to me, the most compelling example of this. There are tense moments throughout the film where we wait for melodrama to rear its head— for example, the scene where Arthur is left alone with Hae Sung for the first time. All signs point to an uncomfortable confrontation, but instead, they engage in a polite conversation about their own ‘inyeon’ or ‘past life connection’. This brings me back to the common reaction I’ve heard: not overwhelming sadness or deep identification with the central couple, but rather discomfort.
Personally, it was only during this final stretch that I began to see the film as something quietly brilliant. We’re conditioned to see the signs of conflict and resolution in film, but Past Lives withholds from these cliches— it’s almost a form of repression. The film’s final moment, Nora crying into her husband’s arms, is not a dramatic payoff, but it is realism. I think that’s what feels ‘off’, that where there is reality and empathy, there can only be speculation about other lives where things are different.
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