In her first directorial feature film, Celine Song surprised and charmed the 2023 Sundance Festival audiences with this romantic drama, Past Lives. It screened at Berlin in February and opened the Seattle International Film Festival. Our own TBA acquired the rights for distribution here, and it opens in cinemas this Wednesday, Aug. 30. If you have a beating heart and appreciate drama and/or romance, you owe it to yourself to watch this beautifully rendered story of life, love, and loss.

It has the simple premise of two childhood friends from Korea meeting up again two decades later, contemplating what could have been and the reality of what has come to pass. It’s in how the story unfolds, as written by Celine Song herself - the real emotions and feelings triggered and the admirable restraint with which this all comes together, that the film succeeds beyond all expectations and can be considered a minor gem of a masterpiece.

We first see Na Young/Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), and Arthur (John Magaro) sitting in a Manhattan bar, and an unseen couple speculates on the relationships between the three. Two decades earlier, Na Young and Hae Sung were classmates in South Korea, and there was something agreed upon and unspoken between the two, a connection that both felt and understood. This is disrupted when Na Young’s family emigrated to Toronto, and Na Young changes her name to Nora.

This change in name plays a part in the two reconnecting by Skype a decade later, but things don’t jell, and they move on in their respective lives. We fast forward to today and the main body of the film’s earnest story. Nora met Arthur at a writer’s retreat, and they’re married, and Hae Sung has come to New York to visit Nora. The film then becomes a sensitively sketched examination of what could have been and whether the Korean concept of in-yeon (akin to two people fated to be together repeatedly through consecutive lives) exists.

No spoilers on what happens, but I admire the film for how it takes the scope of three decades and yet manages to turn the story into a compact, intimate one that resonates. It talks of how one’s past will always color, affect one's present, and influence one's future in ways one could not have expected. It’s also a film, with a running time of some 100 minutes - that sensibly knows not to overstay.

In the Midseason Hollywood Critics Association Awards of June 2023, Celine Song won the Best Screenplay, and Greta Lee copped Best Actress. It’s a film that deserves to find an audience, a showcase of excellent control, restraint, and subtlety.