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.

Celine Song’s ‘Past Lives’ is a remarkably good movie, all the more impressive for being her debut feature film. It charts the relationship between two childhood friends over the course of 25 years, after their friendship was interrupted when one of them emigrates with her family to Canada from Seoul in South Korea. What follows is a depiction of how they reconnect over time, at different stages of their lives, with the characters (and subsequently the audience) contemplating what they mean to one another at different stages of their lives. The characters are Na Young, later Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), and the movie has such a specificity that it’s no surprise it is partially based on the directors own experiences.

This is an astonishing debut feature, and much like another brilliant debut of recent times in Charlotte Wells ‘Aftersun’, it excels in the spaces between dialogue and action where it really captures the longing and heartache that exists within Nora and Hae Sung’s story. As we touch in on their lives, we feel joy as they reconnect online in 2012, then pain as they realise they are in different places and they lose touch again. In the intervening years they date other people, and we begin to understand that this is a movie about two people for whom it has never been the right time, and the right time will likely never come. It’s complicated further when Nora develops a relationship with Arthur (John Magaro), and Magaro arguably has the hardest role in the movie – as his character observantly reflects, he could easily be cast as the villain – the stereotypical American coming between a lifelong love. It is to ‘Past Lives’ credit that it doesn’t go down that obvious route, and it serves to draw out the complex emotions of this situation even more.

The performances are wonderful, emotionally dense and heart wrenching. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are both magnificent, with Yoo doing so much expressive work with his face that shows a man trying to hide a hurt that he feels immensely but doesn’t want to show. Greta Lee has been in quite a few US TV shows, but this performance will open many doors for her. Magaro, as mentioned, completes the trio, and the challenge ‘Past Lives’ poses for the audience is that on the face of it we have three good people here, in a situation where there is no outcome that can reconcile everyone’s happiness. It is poetically tragic and it is one of the years best movies.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: Celine Song

Starring: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt13238346/