Past Lives — a Love Story?

I saw a sneak preview of the Korean/American film Past Lives a few days ago. It's a quiet, enigmatic film—in many ways the opposite of the frenetic Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, and it's been getting a lot of press. It follows a few decades in the life of Nora, who leaves Korea at the age of twelve along with her parents, who have arranged for the family to emigrate to Canada. Nora seems unperturbed by the change; She's bright and willful. In an instant she's become an adult and moved to New York to pursue a career as a playwright.

The plot centers on Nora's relationship with Hae Sung, the boy she left behind in Korea when both were pre-teen kids. At some point Nora and a friend (her mother?) are having some fun on the laptop, looking up people they knew in Korea, and Nora discovers that Hae Sung has also been looking for her. They reconnect via Zoom or Skype, and begin a vague, dreamy correspondence about where their lives are going, how they still think about each other, and so on. Should Hae Sung pay Nora a visit in New York? No, he's studying engineering and plans to go to China to learn Mandarin. It will be good for his career. Maybe Nora should visit him in Seoul? No thanks.

Nora finally suggests that it would be best if they discontinue their conversations. Reluctantly, Hae Sung agrees.  

At a writer's retreat, Nora meets Arthur, a likeable novelist and self-styled "New York Jew" in the Joel Fleischman mold. On their first evening together (as I recall), Nora shares a few bottles of beer with Arthur, and also the Korean concept of “inyun,” a personal connection established in past lives and now bearing fruit—not dissimilar, as far as I can tell, from the Turkish concept of "kismet."

A few frames, and ten years, later, we find Arthur and Nora married and living together in a tiny Brooklyn apartment.

Although the film isn't long by modern standards, it seems to have taken a long time to reach this point. Nora is lively and interesting to look at, and she and Arthur seem to be a good pair, but many viewers will be eager for the other shoe to drop.

Yes, Hae Sung plans to visit New York. Nora agrees to spend some time with him, of course, and Arthur is pretty cool about. Hae Sung has a good job and a fiancée in Korea, but as Arthur puts it: "He's coming half way around the world to see you, after all."

What happens? I'm not going to say. Nor do Nora and Hae Sung have much of interest to say to each other, though they visit quite a few bits of New York scenery while moodily not saying it. All the interesting conversations take place between Nora and Arthur as he grapples with the challenge of sharing his life with a woman who only dreams in Korean, and she struggles to find a place in her heart for Hae Sung's dyed-in-the-wool Korean-ness, and perhaps her own. (Isn't that what the play she's writing and rehearsing is all about?)

The street scenes in Past Lives are colorful and fun to watch. Viewers are likely to be reminded at various points of Woody Allen's Manhattan and Nora Ephraim's You've Got Mail, and even Everything, Everywhere All at Once, in so far as that film considers alternative life paths for its characters, and also creates a meta-verse where they actually take place.

The concept of "inyun" is really just a red herring, though it makes for good late-night conversation at the bar. In the end, what's fated to be is what is;  what "might have been" doesn't fall within its purview. Every life contains more than a few unfulfilled possibilities, which may be worth pondering briefly but are not worth dwelling on. Nor can any single relationship, however deep and strong, be all-absorbing or fully realized. We remain mysterious to one another. 

Or as the Argentine/Italian poet Antonio Porchia put it: "I love you just the way you are, but do not tell me how that is."