A poignant, compassionate ode to love, life & longing.

Thank god for A24. Am I right?

In a world of blockbuster bloat, franchise fatigue, streaming blandness, and unrelenting studio greed (honestly guys, pay these people what they’re worth), A24 are out here doing their own indie darling thing and doing it very, very well.

While they’re certainly not perfect, the financial and critical hit rate the studio has amassed over the years through low budget, high quality, independently spirited titles is not to be sniffed at. With an enviable back catalogue, A24 continually strike gold by doing the simple things extremely well.

Perfectly encapsulating this, Past Lives once again sees A24 delivering with yet another simple but effective gem.

Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrenched apart after Nora's family emigrate from South Korea to Canada. Decades later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.

In many ways the perfect A24 release, Past Lives tells an incredibly simple story but tells it incredibly well. A tale of love, life, and fate across time and place, Past Lives is focused solely on the very specific bond between its central childhood sweethearts and nothing else, taking a modest idea and running with it.

A slow burn beauty, Past Lives weaves a dreamlike spell that’s about nothing and everything all at once. Inviting you to bathe in its visuals, its sounds, its themes, Celine Song’s debut feature is a mesmeric masterpiece that gently immerses you in its ambient meditations without ever losing focus or drifting into self-indulgence.

At first glance, Past Lives is an incredibly delicate piece, yet chip away at this fragile exterior and you’ll soon discover just how thematically dense it is. As a rumination on the lives we lead and have led, the love we have and have had, and the people we are and once were, the film layers its themes up gently but precisely to offer something both substantial and strikingly satisfying.

Intersecting these themes with ruminations on race, nationality, and immigration, Past Lives weaves a deceptively complex web of emotions that pose various questions while offering very few easy answers. This reluctance to give clean-cut, easily digestible solutions may be frustrating for some, but that, in many ways, is life. It can be beautiful, it can be momentous, yet it can confound, it can confuse, and it can leave so much unresolved.

As the foundation for all this, Celine Song’s script is decidedly low-key in its approach, often happy to let us sit in the little moments and minute emotions that she crafts, presenting it all clearly, precisely, and without a hint of melodrama. It’s steady and it’s straightforward but it’s all so meticulously constructed, with an uncomplicated yet compelling premise that is effortlessly sustained across its 106-minute run time.

With just the right blend of emotional heft and narrative intrigue, Song crafts something that keeps you hooked but never forces itself upon you. The result is hypnotic and beautifully subtle, with Song’s writing allowing her cast to really soak in the words and emotions, and to use them as a platform for something truly profound.

Ably supported by the always amiable John Magaro as the story’s third wheel, Arthur, the film’s two central figures, Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, are everything to Past Lives. In essence, they ARE Past Lives, and it’s through their enthralling chemistry that the story shines.

With delicacy and subtlety, Lee and Yoo’s performances are a revelation, making the most of the decidedly sparse script they’re given. While they may not inhabit the same physical space as one another for large portions of the film’s runtime, the duo nevertheless make everything feel so incredibly intimate, all while allowing the geographical and emotional distance between Nora and Hae Sung to be felt.

Stoic and withdrawn yet effortlessly charismatic, Yoo’s Hae Sung is a class act with an assured energy that makes his presence felt through hushed tones, pointed body language, and yearning looks. It’s a wonderfully measured performance from a season pro and one that complements his co-star beautifully.

As the second half of this fateful pairing, Greta Lee is far more overt than Yoo, yet no less impactful because of it. With the story playing out primarily through her eyes, Lee’s Nora Moon makes for a spellbinding protagonist, inviting you to sink deeper and deeper into her contemplations and emotional space as the film progresses.

Whether working in tandem with Yoo or Magaro, or simply left to her own devices, Lee is utterly captivating throughout; at once vulnerable and confident, emotionally open yet physically distant. It’s a performance that takes the sights, sounds, and energy of Past Lives’ environment, folds it all together, before delivering something that’s as powerful as it is gentle.

And what an environment it is. With striking cinematography and camerawork that stuns without being overtly showy, Celine Song constructs every scene with immaculate, dreamlike precision. Complemented by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen’s ethereal score, Past Lives’ world is an immersive, highly evocative one that beautifully captures the bonds and deeply human quirks of its characters.

Whether it’s bustling Seoul, redolent New York City, or the picture-perfect peace of Montauk, Song shoots each location with a thoughtfulness and a wistful melancholia that position each one as a key cog in the story and its central relationship. Continually framing characters through windows, mirrors, door frames, and everything in between, while throwing up visual barriers throughout, Song’s shot compositions capture the spaces and distances between Nora, Hae Sung, and John wonderfully, using every inch of the frame as an effective and highly evocative storytelling device.

Modest and unpretentious yet highly affecting, Song keeps her direction and writing focused, low-key, and deeply personal, yet isn’t afraid to prod and probe bigger themes and concepts where necessary. Through tenderly drawn characters, confident direction, and an honest, deeply human script, Celine Song composes a compassionate, incisive ode to the big questions of love and life.

Gently moving and subtly astute, Past Lives is nevertheless a powerful piece and a stunning debut from writer-director Celine Song. As it delicately yet incisively probes notions of love, life, and longing, Past Lives uses its deftly drawn, strikingly real characters and their beautifully constructed environments to peel back the veil on the human condition.

Past Lives is in cinemas (UK) and available on VOD (US) now.