“There is a word in Korean – inyeon. It means providence or fate. But it’s specifically about relationships between people.” So writer Nora Lee tells her American lover when they meet on an artists’ retreat in director Celine Song’s new film, Past Lives.
The film tells the story of two lives unfolding in parallel, converging only briefly in moments of inyeon. One life is Nora’s time as a child in Korea with her cheot-sarang (first love), and the other is her life in New York when her first love comes to visit her 24 years later, after she has married and settled down with an American husband.
Past Lives explores inyeon through the relationship between Nora (or Na-Young as she was known in Korea) and Hae-Sung, her childhood friend and crush.
