Past Lives Review: A Quiet Masterpiece About Love and Choice

Celine Song’s Past Lives opens with a question: who are these three people at a bar? Two Asians, one white guy, clearly some complicated dynamic. The film spends two hours answering, and the answer is more devastating than any twist could be.

The Story

Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) were childhood sweethearts in Seoul. When Nora’s family emigrates to Canada, they lose touch. Twelve years later, they reconnect over Skype, developing an intense long-distance connection that fades when Nora ends it to focus on her writing career.

Another twelve years pass. Nora is now a playwright in New York, married to Arthur (John Magaro), a fellow writer. Hae Sung visits New York, and the three must navigate what remains between the childhood friends—and what it means for Nora’s present life.

Why It’s Extraordinary

The Restraint

In lesser hands, this would be a melodrama. The husband is cruel, or secretly perfect. The childhood love is idealized, or secretly disappointing. Conflict! Drama! Choice made easy!

Song refuses all of it. Arthur is good—genuinely, complexly good. Hae Sung is lovely—genuinely, complexly lovely. Nora loves them both, differently. No one is wrong; no one is the obstacle. The tragedy is simply that we can’t live multiple lives.

Greta Lee’s Performance

Lee carries the film through subtle shifts. The twelve-year-old girl still lives in the grown woman. We see her perform “Americanness” with Arthur, then shift toward something else with Hae Sung—not performance, exactly, but a different self that exists in Korean, in that history.

Her performance in the final scene—just sitting on a stoop, watching a car drive away—devastates. She says almost nothing. Lee says everything.

The Immigrant Experience

Past Lives understands immigration as identity multiplication. Nora didn’t just move; she became someone new. The person who would have stayed, who would have married her childhood sweetheart, who would have had that life—that person exists as a kind of ghost. Hae Sung is that ghost made flesh.

The film asks: did Nora leave Korea, or did Korea-Nora leave and America-Nora take over? Both are true. The pain is holding both truths.

In-Yun

The Korean concept of in-yun—connections across lives, fate that accumulates over reincarnations—structures the film. Hae Sung explains it to young Nora early on. Later, Nora explains it to Arthur.

But Song is too smart to let in-yun become destiny. The film asks whether in-yun is real or a story we tell ourselves. The answer: it doesn’t matter. The story we tell ourselves shapes our lives as much as any “truth.”

Technical Beauty

Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner shoots New York like no film in years. The city isn’t backdrop; it’s character. Late-night walks reveal a New York that feels lived in, specific, emotionally resonant.

Song’s blocking speaks louder than dialogue. Watch where characters sit in relation to each other. The space between people tells the story.

The Men

John Magaro’s Arthur deserves special attention. He could be the obstacle, the clueless American husband who doesn’t understand. Instead, he’s painfully aware. His scene questioning whether Nora would have married him if he were Korean cuts deep.

Teo Yoo’s Hae Sung is gentle presence—the path not taken made real. He’s not idealized; he’s just himself, which is enough to unsettle everything.

What It’s Actually About

Past Lives isn’t really a love triangle. It’s about:

• The lives we didn’t live: Every choice forecloses others
• Immigration as death and rebirth: Who did you leave behind?
• Language as identity: Nora speaks differently in Korean and English
• The limitations of love: Arthur loves Nora, but he can’t speak to the girl she was
• Fate vs. choice: Or whether there’s a difference

The film doesn’t answer these questions. It holds them, tenderly, and lets them hurt.

Minor Notes

Some may find the pace too slow. The middle section, covering twelve years of missed connection through brief scenes, requires patience. Trust that the payoff is coming.

The film is also very specifically for a certain audience—immigrants, bilinguals, anyone who’s ever wondered about the road not taken. If you haven’t felt that, some emotional registers may not resonate.

The Verdict

Rating: 5/5 stars

Past Lives is a masterpiece. Celine Song has made one of the great debut films, a work that’s formally precise and emotionally overwhelming. It joins In the Mood for Love and Before Sunset in the small canon of romances about what didn’t happen.

The final scene will wreck you. Not through manipulation—through recognition. Everyone has a Hae Sung. Everyone has a life they didn’t live. Past Lives doesn’t ask you to mourn that life. It asks you to hold it alongside the one you chose.

Few films have ever done that so beautifully.

If You Liked This

Explore these films about love, time, and choice:

• In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece of restraint
• Before Sunset - What if you met your “one that got away” again?
• Lost in Translation - Cultural displacement and connection
• The Worst Person in the World - Life’s choices across years
• Aftersun - Memory, loss, and what we’ll never understand