Past Lives
Details
Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront notions of love and destiny.
- Director
- Celine Song
- Writer
- Celine Song
- Stars
- Greta Lee
- Teo Yoo
- John Magaro
"A miracle like Past Lives is harder than it looks. Push the sentiment just a little too much and it becomes a treacly mess. Instead, the tone feels close-to-perfect, presenting a fresh romantic comedy-of-ideas for a time sorely missing in them. I’m picturing Song in thousands of previous lives, making a slightly better film each and every time. This feels like one of her later ones." Yes, Past Lives Is as Good as They Say
"Song has a tendency to accentuate the space between Nora and Hae Sung. As the camera drifts between the two, the separation between them seems at once unremarkable and unbearably infinite, a gap that is impossible to close despite their close proximity. It’s a visual that strikes a painful, necessary chord: Some rifts are impossible to mend, but maybe it’s worth reconciling with their indelible nature. Past Lives is beautiful in all the ways it does just that." TRACE SAUVEUR,
"That mix of nostalgia, love, and remorse makes “Past Lives” so effective and lovely. The film carries echoes of other movies like Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise," and David Lean’s “The Passionate Friends,” but “Past Lives” so confidently belongs to Song—the way she envelopes the settings around her characters, how carefully she constructs their relationship over the years, and how quickly she returns that excited feeling to their conversations after years of silence. It takes a romantic view of the if-thens of what could have been, enjoying them like sandcastles washed away by time. We can delight in the memories of our past lives while acknowledging the loss of childhood things left behind, roads never taken, and relationships that were never meant for us." Monica Castillo
HOW THIS WORKS
To learn where to stream Past Lives or rent it online, search [JustWatch.com](https://www.justwatch.com/). View it on your own during the week, then join us for our Zoom conversation this Saturday evening 10/7 at 7:20p Eastern. The Zoom link will appear on the right when you RSVP. If the link doesn't work for you, copy and paste it into the search bar of your browser.