YNOT at the Movies

As we live on with our lives, we constantly evolve and become who we are at the present moment and who we might be in the future. In the process, we encounter and interact with many others outside of our families who also become part of our lives. That fate of personal connection in this vast world is described as Yi-yun (인연 in Korean and 因緣 in Chinese) in Asian culture. The writer-director Celine Song's remarkable directorial debut "Past Lives" (USA 2023 | 120 min.) beautifully examines the Yi-yun relationships among three kind souls who are poignantly intertwined together by their fate. Watching this film makes us reflect on our own Yi-yun with others who have been part of our lives in our past.

The film opens with its three main characters sitting at a bar in New York City at three o'clock in the morning. We are immediately intrigued by the relationship among them, just as the narration voice-over speculates. The woman in the center is Nora (Greta Lee), an aspiring Korean immigrant writer; the handsome Asian man is Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), Nora's childhood friend who comes to visit her for a week from Seoul; and the white man is Arthur (John Magaro), Nora's self-conscious writer husband who is often awkwardly left out of the conversations in Korean.

It turns out that it has been a long way coming leading up to this moment, since the young Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min) and young Nora (Moon Seung-ah) parted 24 years ago when Nora left Seoul and immigrated to Canada with her family. As a teenager, Nora is already ambitious and wants to write in English to win the Nobel Prize in literature because she thinks writing in Korean is never going to make the cut. Hae Sung has a big crush on Nora, even though he cannot characterize it as love as a teenager.

After Nora comes to the West, she indeed becomes a writer and gets married to Arthur whom she met at a writer's retreat. Although Hae Sung has faded away in Nora's mind since a long time ago, he still thinks about her and has been looking for her. Twelve years later, thanks to the internet, they reconnect virtually across the continents. But a reunion doesn't happy until 24 years later.

Inspired by her own life experience, the play-writer Celine Song crafts a stunning film debut. She subtly unfolds a bittersweet story that we can all resonate with to some degree. She miraculously positions her characters in each frame and confidently proceeds with her storytelling. She lets her characters eloquently and candidly describe their feelings and emotions when they do speak, and convey their profound emotions sometimes when they do not say a word.

The performances from the three lead actors are marvelous. They pitch-perfectly capture the complex mind-sets of these characters, who are all nice and kind, so they maneuver their best not to hurt others. Yet, the reality and life itself are often complicated, and even more so when they go beyond one's own culture and background.

This quiet film is touching, elegant, heart-wrenching, and thought-provoking. It makes us wonder how our life's trajectories are shaped by those who we share Yi-yun with, in the past, the present, and the future.

"Past Lives" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, June 9, 2023.