Film Review: Past Lives is a delicate tale of circumstance and unrequited love

"In a delicately wrought film – all the main protagonists are excruciatingly polite – much of the emotional swirl remains beneath the surface"

Greta Lee as Nora, and Teo Yoo as Hae Sung in Past Lives

• Past Lives
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

The Buddhist concept of reincarnation is predicated on the idea of ‘past lives’, during which we struggle to live in a way that will allow us to escape the dukkha of pain, suffering and the endless cycle of rebirth. 

Celine Song’s Past Lives (12A), which opens in South Korea, personifies this philosophy in Na Young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min), childhood friends and schoolmates who gradually become sweethearts.

Their lives are ripped apart, however, when Na Young’s parents emigrate to Canada, leaving a devastated Hae Sung behind. 

Twenty years later, Hae Sung (now played by Teo Yoo) travels to New York, where Na Young – now calling herself Nora (Greta Lee) – is a playwright fully immersed in American life and culture, and in a long-term relationship with Arthur (John Magaro).

It’s a fascinating variation on the classic love-triangle story, albeit one with no defined angles or points of intersection: Nora remains fond of Hae Sung (at least, she retains fond memories of their childhood friendship), while Hae Sung desperately wants to believe that he and Nora are fated to be together, even as all the evidence points to the contrary.

In a delicately wrought film – all the main protagonists, Arthur included, are excruciatingly polite – much of the emotional swirl remains beneath the surface: Here Celine Song trades in elusive feelings and the faintest of nuance, creating a bittersweet account of unrequited love that is shot through with a sense of what might have been had the stars aligned just a little bit differently.

John Magaro provides solid support to the main players, but this is effectively a two-hander as Nora and Hae Sung navigate an uncharted and complex emotional journey, with Teo Yoo and Greta Lee superb as their characters gradually come to terms with the marked absence of the love story’s conventional chemistry.