From the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew he was going to be an important part of my life. It was bewildering how fast I felt it in my stomach, like something crawled inside of me and made it abundantly clear that this feeling wasn’t going to go away. We quickly became fast friends, but everything that lingered within our silence told me something otherwise. I spoke openly and fondly towards his love interests, he spoke charmingly in a way that enchanted me through rose-tinted blushes and lengthy conversations, and I knew that we could be something great. But deep down, I came to terms with the fact we couldn’t be together. I couldn’t risk everything we built as a result of my heart stinging at every moment we looked at each other with the stars in our eyes. All the feelings I felt didn’t disappear, they seemingly just became fragments of me falling into place with being comfortable being friends. 

I was never really a big hopeless romantic growing up. Even now in my early 20s, I have always been incredibly career-driven. But leaving university soon and doing a lot of self-reflection, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with the idea that I walked out on this bright, beautiful thing that I could never quite express. Throughout my rewatch of Past Lives, it was the first time I truly identified with the idea of maturing and looking fondly on a potential great relationship that would have changed my life, in some shape or form. 

Perhaps it’s due to the fact that Celine Song wrote Past Lives about her own childhood sweetheart, and the quiet glances she had experienced sitting next to him and her husband at once, but everything in Past Lives brings to the forefront the everlasting grief of something that will always be unspoken. When Nora and Hae-Sung mature and go throughout their lives, they distance themselves as a result to focus on their personal careers. Song explores Nora’s heartbreak as she struggles to come to this conclusion, but ultimately knows it’s for the best. Hae-Sung ponders throughout his life about Nora, wishfully considering what could have been. 

Despite Past Lives being a decade-spanning story, it feels incredibly relevant to anyone who has experienced an equivalent of a one that got away. Instead of punishing our main characters for not acting upon their feelings, Song makes her own version of New York feel as if it’s a safe haven amongst everything else happening in their lives. The dreaminess and lull aura of the 2000s take our hearts, and mend them back together in a moment of self-reflection. 

Universally, Past Lives relates to something all of us at some point will experience. I haven’t been in love, or I haven’t experienced a decade-spanning romance, but we all have experienced a form of In Yun. There’s some type of magic in remembering the possibility of something more than what we’re hiding behind the surface, and it’s all around us. It’s this small, beautiful golden string overlapping our world, spoken out into Song’s words. It’s intoxicating, heartbreakingly devastating, and quiet. Just like the wishful wondering of possibility, all wrapped together.  

Past Lives is currently streaming on Paramount+ and back in select theaters.
You can read our review of the film here.