Everyone knows a couple who are so perfect for each other that you can’t imagine them apart.  We think of them as soulmates, two people who were destined to be together.  The notion that there is someone out there who is only meant for you is an incredibly romantic one.  You hope that you’ll find that special someone one day, and consider yourself fortunate when you do.  Sometimes, finding your soulmate is incredibly easy.  Past Lives tells the story of Na Young (Moon Seung-ah, Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min, Teo Yoo) who, beginning when they were twelve-years old, are obviously meant for each other.  They’re inseparable at school, laughing at their private jokes.  Na’s outgoing and friendly personality and Hae’s quiet and sensitive nature compliment each other perfectly.  When their mothers arrange a playdate, they are immediately convinced that Na and Mae will be married one day.  Unfortunately, fate intervenes when Na’s parents decide to emigrate to Toronto.  This is devastating news for Hae, who is the hopeless romantic between the two of them.  Na is also sad at leaving Hae behind, but she embraces this big change in her life.  She wants to become a writer and tells her classmates that Korea has never produced a writer who won the Nobel prize for literature.

To prepare for her new life, Na adopts the Anglo-friendly first name of Nora and even learns English on the flight to Toronto.  Twelve years later she is pursuing her dream in New York City, the place where writers go to become famous.  Fate intervenes again, this time in the form of Facebook.  Nora discovers that Hae has been looking for her, and she reaches out to him.  When they connect on Skype, their affection for each other is instantly rekindled.  They still are soul mates, but their lives are now on different paths.  Nora has been invited to a writing retreat on Long Island, while Hae is in Seoul and cannot travel abroad.  The choice she is faced with is a difficult one between two destinies:  to continue on her path or return to Korea to be with Hae.  Never one to give into sentimentality, Nora puts her relationship with Hae on hold and takes the train to Montauk.

At the writers workshop, Nora meets Arthur (John Magaro) and the two hit it off and quickly become romantically linked.  Back in Korea, Hae has turned into a passenger in his own life.  He became an engineer and served in the military, but nothing has replaced the spark that Nora once provided.  Another twelve years pass and Hae is alone after ending his current relationship.  He decides to visit Nora in New York, a curious move because, as his friends remind him, she has been married for seven years.  Does Hae expect Nora to leave Arthur and run away with him?  Or is he looking for something that will finally let him embrace life again?

Past Lives is a love story, just not in the traditional sense.  While the affection between Nora and Hae endures despite the twin obstacles of time and distance, their story doesn’t end in the way that they or we would expect.  They know that they are soulmates, but fate always conspires against them.  As sad as this may sound, their story is actually not a tragedy.  The Korean word “inyeon” describes how people are linked together in the past, present and future lives.  (This is where the movie’s title originates.)  Even though Nora and Hae are not destined to be together in this lifetime, they can take solace knowing that they’ll get another chance in the next one.  

In her feature debut, writer-director Celine Song uses the familiar premise of star-crossed lovers as the foundation for a disarmingly personal story filled with simmering passions and frank spirituality.  The movie reminded me of Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, another movie  that simmers while it muses on the paradoxical nature of love and intimacy.  As the players who comprise this unlikely love triangle, Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro bring an emotional honesty to their characters that give the story a deeply spiritual quality.  Lee is simply radiant as Nora, a woman who is an intoxicating mix of intellect and sensuality.  Yoo always reminds us of the undying love that still burns within the ghost-like Hae.  Finally, Magaro shines in what is the trickiest performance of the three.  He makes Arthur someone who is sympathetic despite being the one who stands in the way of a love that transcends time and space.  Past Lives is a beautiful and heart-wrenching film that captivates from beginning to end.  Unequivocally one of the best movies of 2023.  Highly Recommended.

Analysis

Past Lives is unquestionably a love story.  The feelings Nora and Hae express for each other throughout the film show how deep their feelings are for each other.  Is their story a romance?  I believe it is, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Nora and Hae are in love.  This is obvious from the outset of the movie.  As children in school, the intimacy they shared is proof that they were more than just friends.  They never kiss, but they are as close as two children can be.  Nora doodles on Hae’s arm.  Hae stays by Nora’s side whenever she cries.  They walk home from school together every day.  They hold hands.  They are so comfortable in each other’s presence that their parents know they are meant for each other.  Unfortunately, destiny throws their relationship a curve ball when Nora’s parents decide to emigrate to Canada.  The two are separated from each other for the next twelve years, but then the internet brings them back together.  And when Hae finds himself alone again twelve years later, Hae travels to New York to once again be reunited with his childhood sweetheart.

When they meet again after so many years apart, their love is rekindled once more.  Their shared glances smolder with an undercurrent of passion that is palpable.  Just like when they were kids, the way they are together would convince any passerby that the two are lovers.  However, just because Hae has made a grand gesture doesn’t mean that Nora will run off with him.  (Past Lives is not that kind of love story.)  Arthur is familiar with romantic tropes and fears that this story is too good not to come true, that the love his wife has for her childhood friend will win out in the end.  While Nora admits that she still harbors feelings for Hae, she’s not the same person she was twenty years ago.  Hae recognizes this and says goodbye to Nora once more.  She returns to Arthur and cries.

As someone steeped in Western culture, I normally would interpret Past Lives as a tragic love story.  For example, Scorsese’s Age of Innocence also depicts a passionate love that is never allowed to come to fruition due to fate and circumstance.  While Past Lives has a similar conclusion, I didn’t come away feeling that it was a tragedy because the movie itself never depicts the outcome as a tragedy.  This is due to the film’s use of the Korean notion of “inyeon” to provide a deeper context to the story.  As Nora explains to Arthur:

It’s an inyeon if two strangers even walk past each other in the street and their clothes accidentally brush, because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it’s because there have been 8,000 layers of inyeon over 8,000 lifetimes.

Accordingly, what happens in Past Lives is not only the events depicted in the movie, but also what could happen to the characters in their future lives.  That Nora and Hae weren’t able to be together in this lifetime is sad, but when viewed in the light of inyeon, this lifetime isn’t the last chance the two will have to be together.  Hae tells Nora he understands this when he leaves.  In this lifetime, he has been relegated to the sidelines while Nora and Arthur are together.  However, in their next lifetimes the situation may be reversed and Arthur will be the one watching Nora and Hae be together.  Just because the way things turned out for Nora and Hae in this lifetime doesn’t mean it can’t be entirely different the next time around.

With this in mind, it’s possible to view what happens between Nora and Hae as a romance.  If one believes in the notion of inyeon, their relationship extends far back into the past and into the future.  Their current lifetime may end with their love never extended beyond a courtship, but perhaps they will be able to embrace each other completely as romantic partners in the next one.  The story of Nora and Hae isn’t a tragic one of love denied, but an optimistic one of love delayed.

The perfect love story

In the movie’s climactic scene, Nora tells Hae that he’s in love with a version of her that doesn’t exist anymore.  While what she says is true, it doesn’t diminish the feelings the two continue to have for each other.  Their love may have formed when they were just children, but the connection they have has managed to endure, despite being physically separated for twenty years and only speaking to each other for a brief period in between.  Because of the nature of their relationship, their love has remained strong because it has not had to endure the natural ebbs and flows of life.

For example, when Nora confides to Hae that she and Arthur argue and fight, he’s incredulous.  He can’t imagine her behaving that way with anyone because the relationship he has with her is not the same as a typical relationship.  The one he has had with Nora has existed primarily in his head, the only exception being when the two talked via Skype.  He and Nora have never had to deal with any of the typical stresses of an actual relationship, which Nora compares to two plants learning to live in the same pot.  Nora and Arthur likely had arguments over both  mundane and life-altering things, ranging from who left the seat up to which apartment should we live in.  Hae, however, has been able to relive those idyllic moments he shared with Nora before she left.  The love Nora and Hae share is perfect because it is based in a specific time and place, and has not been tested by real life.

Past Lives reminded me a lot of Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation.  In that movie, two people meet under a very specific set of circumstances and connect in a way that certainly can be described as love.  Although they are attracted to each other and are affectionate towards each other, their love is never consummated physically.  Even though they separate at the end of the movie and will likely never see each other again, their love for each other will remain strong because it will forever be trapped in amber.  This is also true of the love Nora and Hae share.  It originated during a time when the two were children and remained unaltered over the intervening decades.  If Nora and Hae meet again in twelve years, the feelings they have for each other would still be strong because they originate in a time and place that will always be  perfect in their shared memories.

Happiness through change

Another theme that Past Lives explores is how our happiness is a reflection of the way we deal with change.  For Nora, life is an adventure.  She fully embraces change and is open to new experiences.  While saying goodbye to Hae was sad, Nora had to let him go so that she could appreciate her new life in Toronto.  She has a creative spirit like her father and becomes a playwright and moves to New York.  When she’s forced to choose between returning to Seoul to reunite with Hae or going to Montauk for a year-long workshop, she chooses the latter because the future is more important to her than revisiting the past.  Because she’s comfortable with being in new environments and meeting people, she makes friends with Arthur and soon falls in love with him.  Nora’s adult life continually evolves because she’s open to life’s possibilities.

Hae, on the other hand, does not appreciate change.  His life has never taken flight since Nora emigrated to Toronto.  Unlike Nora, he chooses a more practical path at school by studying engineering.  When he tells her that he’s interested in living in China, it is for practical reasons.  (It will be helpful for his career if he can speak Mandarin.)  He never leaves Seoul and continues to hang out with his friends from university.  His military experience is dull and uneventful.  Because his professional career is mediocre, he declines to propose to his girlfriend because he believes she deserves better.  Hae’s life is a disappointment because he’s always living in the past, reflecting on the one time in his life when he was happy.  Instead of taking control of his life, he’s been content to let things happen to him.  The only change he is open to is being reunited with Nora.

Ironically, Hae learns to embrace change when he visits New York to see Nora.  Although he never states his reasons for taking the trip, it’s obvious that he’s still in love with her and wants to see her again.  Even though his grand gesture doesn’t produce the results he secretly wanted, it does force him out of his shell.  Nora’s love has not only given him the confidence he needed to embrace change, but also to let her go.  When Hae again says goodbye to Nora, he’s no longer sad because he’s finally able to move forward with his life.

A meditation on life

Another trait that Past Lives shares with Lost in Translation is how it provides space for its characters to simply be.  Just like Coppola let us follow Charlotte on her journeys around Japan, Song includes several scenes where Nora is given space to take in her surroundings free from the pressures of love, work and family.  Whether she’s looking at the New York skyline from her apartment window, enjoying the train ride to Montauk or walking around her neighborhood, Song is reminding us to appreciate those quiet, private moments when life gives them to us.

It comes as no surprise that when Hae leaves his shell of an existence behind and travels to New York, he begins to see life from Nora’s perspective.  Song provides us with glimpses of cloudy skies and raindrops falling on puddles, an allusion to how Hae is reengaging with the world around him.  Then, when Nora plays tour guide for Hae, Song captures their journey in the full view of the city’s famous landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge.  With Nora as his inspiration, Hae has remembered how to experience life and is ready to return home.