Past Lives (2023): Love, Memory and Choice

Warning: Contains spoilers. Celine Song's Past Lives is a quiet story about Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur, with no convenient villain. There is a first love, a migration, a marriage, twenty-four years apart, and a painful encounter with the life that could have been. The film invites us to look beyond the love triangle: how a person mourns an unlived version of himself without destroying what has become his reality.

The 2023 film was written and directed by Celine Song; starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro. According to the official A24 synopsis, two close childhood friends are separated after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea, only to meet two decades later in New York and face the questions of fate, love and the choices that life is made of. Below, we analyze the dramaturgy and behavior of fictional characters, without giving them distant diagnoses.

In the film, the Korean concept of in-yun sounds: the meeting of two people can be imagined as the result of many previous contacts in past lives. The film does not turn it into proof of mystical certainty. In-yun works as a poetic language with which the characters try to give form to what is simultaneously chance, history, and choice.

It is easy to romanticize such an image: if the connection seems fateful, it is tempting to think of it as a demand to act. However, the film divides significance and duty. A person can forever remain a part of our internal history, even though a shared future with them will not be an ethical or viable solution.

Hae Sung comes to New York to see the real Nora, but along with her meets Na Young, the girl she was in Seoul. In his feeling there is tenderness, memory and projection. He knows grown-up Nora in fragments: through the screen, a few conversations and a few days together. The space between the facts is filled with the imagination of what they could have become for each other.

That doesn't make his feelings invalid. Projection is a normal part of falling in love: we see the person and at the same time our own hope, loss, or undeveloped part of ourselves. Psychological maturity begins with the question of what exactly belongs to the partner, and what we brought to the relationship from our own biography.

Emigration changes not only the address. It can sever the ties between languages, names, bodily habits, and visions of the future. Nora builds a life in English, becomes a dramatist, marries Arthur. In conversations with Hae Sung, the Korean part of her experience that her husband cannot know from within comes to life.

Therefore, the meeting with Hae Sung can be read as a meeting with the delayed self. The longing is aimed at a specific person and at the same time at childhood, Seoul, the name Na Young, a different pace of life. When multiple losses merge into one, a loved one from the past can seem like the only door back. In fact, a return to one's history is also possible through language, memory, creativity and new forms of belonging.

Arthur understands the drama of the situation: a Korean childhood friend is crossing the ocean to see his wife. He talks about his anxiety and admits that he does not have access to a part of her inner world. His vulnerability does not become a command, an interrogation, or a prohibition.

This shows adult intimacy: the partner does not have to be the only witness of all versions of our life. At the same time, his fear deserves a place in the conversation. Nora does not hide the meeting and does not force Arthur to pretend indifference. Their marriage endures the presence of a complex feeling, because the characters maintain contact with reality and boundaries.

Three people sit together at the bar, but the past is not equally shared. Nora and Hae Sung can return to Korean and their memories; Arthur sits beside a conversation he cannot enter with the same freedom. The camera lets us notice the discomfort without immediately assigning blame. For one person, the encounter means a return; for another, it raises the fear of remaining outside a significant part of his wife’s life.

Here we can distinguish jealousy from an attempt to control someone else’s biography. Arthur is anxious, but the film does not turn that anxiety into a right to forbid the meeting. Nora, meanwhile, has to hold two people in her attention: hear what remains between her and Hae Sung without making her husband’s presence disappear. Closeness is tested through small gestures, pauses and the willingness to acknowledge discomfort that cannot be entirely removed.

A typical romantic story often asks the viewer to choose the "right" man. Past Lives refuses this competition. Hae Sung is not pure fate, Arthur is not an obstacle, and Nora is not a prize. Each of the three has a perspective and limitations.

Such a decision brings the film closer to real experience: sometimes the conflict arises not because of someone's cruelty, but because of the incompatibility of time, place and already made choices. Pain does not always indicate an error. It can be the price of the fact that a person sees several valuable opportunities and is able to live only one.

Psychology describes the tendency to imagine alternative versions of events: what would have happened if the family had not emigrated, if the video calls had not stopped, if Hae Sung had arrived earlier. Such counterfactual thinking helps to make sense of choices, but can support an idealized story that reality has never tested with life, conflict, and responsibility.

An unlived life has a special advantage: there are no bills, fatigue, compromises and the morning silence after an argument. That is why it can seem less compromised than the life being lived. A useful question is not "what path would be ideal?", but "what values ​​from that possible life beg for a place in my current one?"

After Hae Sung leaves, Nora walks home and cries in Arthur’s arms. These tears can be read as more than the loss of a man she did not choose to live with. They may also hold childhood, language, country, Na Young and a future that remained only possible. Arthur does not demand that she immediately explain or stop her sadness; he meets her as she returns.

The finale shows an important ability: to grieve for the unlived and to remain in the chosen life. Acceptance does not erase love and doubt. It allows these feelings to exist without automatically turning into decisions.

The long wait for the car near the ending leaves the characters with time they can scarcely fill. They stand together without turning farewell into a spectacular gesture. For a viewer, the pause may be harder to bear than a kiss or an argument: a connection can remain meaningful without becoming a shared life. In this reading, mourning begins by acknowledging a limit rather than trying to prove that the feeling was not strong enough.

Nora returns to Arthur, and her tears do not require one exclusive explanation. Parting, childhood memories and the exhaustion of encountering several versions of herself may coexist. The film leaves her that room. Afterwards, we might ask which part of our own past we want to recover literally, and which part needs a place in our present through language, conversation, a visit or remembrance.

The topic of projections and mature intimacy is discussed in more detail in the article "Romantic love without the myth of the second half". You can use "Diary of the mistress of her borders" for written work with boundaries, responsibility and own decisions. It helps to notice where our need ends and another person's freedom begins.

If figurative language is closer to you, the Kazkoterapiia workshop can become a space for exploring alternative stories: what role do I live, who am I waiting for, what future do I give up and what do I want to take from it into the present. MriyaRun products support self-reflection and are not a substitute for psychotherapy, medical care, or crisis support.

Dmytro Telushko, psychotherapist and founder of MriyaRun. For me, "Past Lives" is a film about the ability to recognize the value of connection without appropriating a person. Nora doesn't have to prove that her past was a mistake in order to stay in the present. Hae Sung may be an important part of her story, Arthur a living intimacy today, and tears a way to reclaim both truths.