Past Lives
Director: Celine Song
Writer: Celine Song
Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Moon Seung-ah, Leem Seung-min, Yun Ji-hye, Choi Won-young
Seen on: 14./15.4.2026

Plot:
When Nora (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min) were children, they were best friends. But then Nora’s parents (Yun Ji-hye, Choi Won-young) decide to leave South Korea and move to Canada, and they lose touch. It is only twenty years later that they meet again in New York where Nora (Greta Lee) moved to pursue her writing career and where she lives with her husband Arthur (John Magaro). For a week, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) comes to visit, and the two have to confront their past – and their future.

Past Lives is a thoughtful and bittersweet film, a grow-up take on relationships with a great cast. It is so mature, it is pretty amazing that it is Song’s first feature. I really enjoyed it.

Much like Song’s follow-up feature Materialists, Past Lives takes a romantic trope and examines it in a thoughtful, maybe more realistic manner (though Materialists veers away from realism at the end and becomes the trope that it examined somewhat). In Past Lives, it honestly reflects on the allure of the missed connections, but it also allows that what may have been the start of a great relationship at the time is in no way a guarantee for a great relationship twenty years later. Or even a reason for one. There is still a bit of a Hollywood treatment, but not one that just reuses tropes.

It’s a bittersweet film that acknowledges the importance of formative relationships even when they don’t last. Nora can regret and even grief that Hae Sung is no longer a part of her life in the way he used to be, and at the same time she can be very happy with Arthur. (That Arthur is only moderately insecure about Nora’s connection with Hae Sung is fantastic in both senses of the word and makes Arthur a great role model in the way that we rarely see men being on screen.)

Lee and Yoo carry most of the film, and they really embody the different stages of their characters‘ relationship in the most natural way. It is the glances and the silences that speak most loudly here, though the dialogues are also often pretty sharp. Magaro is also a great choice, having just the right presence to make Arthur and Nora’s relationship feel lived in, but not taking center-stage.

I had high expectations going into the film, having both heard much praise about it and enjoyed Materialists myself. Past Lives is probably the better film of the two and certainly lives up to its accolades. I am looking forward to seeing what Song does next.

Summarizing: very good.