This supremely confident feature debut from Korean-Canadian writer-director Celine Song is a spine-tingling gem – a tale of not-so-brief encounters between star-crossed souls, played out over a period of 24 years. Combining the aching yearning of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love with the casual intimacy of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, it paints a picture of unresolved affection as delicate as it is profound, interweaving timeless themes of fate and providence with more playfully down-to-earth musings on happenstance and shapeshifting identity. The result, which has one foot in South Korea and the other in North America, feels at times like an impossible mashup of Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul and Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, shot through with a stoical melancholia that recalls the final scenes of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Yes, really.
We open in a New York bar, where an unseen patron asks: “Who do you think they are to each other?” Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s 35mm camera gazes in long shot at a trio of customers – South Korean Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), Korean-Canadian migrant Nora (Greta Lee) and Jewish American Arthur (John Magaro) – and the faceless voice has “no idea” how they might be related, whether as siblings, colleagues or lovers.
