Past Lives

Halting, quiet and packs an emotional punch for anyone who has wondered what if? with someone who they no longer have in their orbit. Song nails the subtlety and the long distance longing. Yoo is perfectly cast and has this face of sadness, pain, longing, and endurance that is never overwrought and always feels silently present. The artistic efficiency of which this film is shot is impressive. Song appears to give us all a master class in her directing debut of saying a lot without using a lot of words and what the costs of diaspora, listening to our inner spirit, maintaining human connections and how much being in each other's physical presence alters our feelings and expectations.

This is an emotionally intimate debut movie from Celine Song who is Korean-American- Canadian. It has " grown up" themes ( love and marriage). An emotionally intelligent 15 year old, or your college age kids might appreciate this. Otherwise, this is a movie aimed at adults. It is the story of two childhood friends who share a bond of close friendship (agape love) across decades. Hollywood would have turned their love story into a story of “eros”, and shown us passion, eroticism and intensity. But this a movie about the timelessness of love, martial fidelity and wistfulness. It’s a story of love and friendship, laced with quiet regret, but the characters show grace and kindness. Philia and Agape love, not eros. More than once the Korean word “inyeon' is used, which does not translate to English. Like the Greek/ gospel words for love, it is a transcendental word. It is a Buddhist reincarnation belief that every deep relationship is a meeting between two souls who have met countless times in their past lives. The movie compresses two decades from the characters lives into two hours, and is a beautiful love story. The ending is hope filled, but sad, as the characters’ past regrets and future hopes are realistically interwoven. The main character Nora (Greta Lee) immigrates to Canada from South Korea when she is twelve, leaving behind her childhood sweetheart ( Hae Sung). Twelve years later they reconnect online, and seem to form an intense bond of friendship and love thru on line chatting. But this is short-lived, since Nora wants to focus on her career and she stops communicating with him. Another decade passes, and in the third meeting of the two characters, Hae Sung comes to New York to find her. But Nora is now happily married. Secure in a loving and happy marriage, Nora feels the conflicts of navigating her feelings from the past and present, but never waivers from choosing wisely. She has to choose between someone who could have been her soul mate in another life, and her husband, who is a sweet man she adores. “This is my life, and I’m living it with you,” Nora tells her husband. “This is where I ended up, and this is where I’m supposed to be.” Few movies portray marital love ( which combines phila, eros and agape) so well.