Past Lives

Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are separated from each other when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, Hae Sung resolves to visit Nora for a few days in New York where she lives with her American husband Arthur. Facing each other like the phantoms of a life unlived, they confront notions of destiny, love and the choices that constitute a life.
Making her cinematic debut here with Past Lives is New York based playwright Celine Song. But nothing about this intensely resonant meditation on the trajectory of life would mark her as a newcomer. Drawing from personal experience, Song is guided by a precise vision of the story’s conflicted emotional core. Thanks to this compass, she is able to draw a truth from every situation that is both visceral and universal and affects the audience in more ways than would the simple set-up of a love triangle. The questions explored by the filmmaker and her brilliant cast are broader: Does love shape our lives? What kinds of sacrifices are necessary to become the people we are? The echo triggered by these inquiries induces a real existential vertigo.