Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life. 2023, USA/South Korea, 105 minutes, rated PG-13
“Past Lives” is a wistful what-if story about two people, the children they were and the adults they become. The movie follows them through the years and across assorted reunions, separations and continents as well as milestones momentous and ordinary. It’s a tale of friendship, love, regret and what it means to truly live here and now. In a sense it is a time-travel movie, because even as the two characters keep moving forward, they remain inexorably tethered to the past, which means it’s also a story about everyday life.” Critic’s Pick. – The New York Times
“A soaring, decades-spanning romance that will make you catch your breath.” – The Hollywood Reporter.
“A confident entry in the canon of great romances—one that expands the emotional scope of what a love story can be.” – The Atlantic
“Celine Song makes a quietly spectacular writing-directing debut with Past Lives, a lyrical slow burn of a film that expertly holds back wellsprings of emotion, until it unleashes a deluge.” – Washington Post
“A movie that liberates your tears and makes you fall in love with it. It is almost assuredly predestined to be the single best movie you see this year.” – Rolling Stone
“The movie ripples with the quiet melodrama of real life, the way big things often happen in the margins, and small things gradually come to mean the world.” – TIME
“Past Lives, folding two decades into less than two hours, is as swift and fleet as it is emotionally and philosophically expansive.” – Los Angeles Times
“Heads up, Oscar. Celine Song crafts the best movie of the year so far by using her own life to explore the meaning of destiny as a Korean playwright (the glorious Greta Lee) is torn between a past love (Teo Yoo) and her American husband (John Magaro).” – ABC News
