Academy Award contender Past Lives is a movie nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay that makes the audience experience a roller coaster of emotions.

It’s also a movie about reality. The movie opens with bar patrons trying to guess who the three people they’re watching across the room are to each other, and one states, “that’s a tough one.”  Indeed. In this film, we have three main characters: two childhood sweethearts and a married couple who face the “what if” question when Nora’s first love comes to visit her in the USA from South Korea.  In a typical romantic movie, we might see the main character get back together with the “one that got away,” but throughout this film, we get to question what Nora will do.  It isn’t until the very end that we know.

The plot calmly meanders through the idea of “In-Yun,” the Korean word for “providence” or fate. Here, the film discusses the idea of 8000 layers of lives lived that lead them to the one moment they marry their soul mate.  Each character in this film has a different perspective: Nora tells us, “that’s just something Koreans say to seduces someone.”  Arthur (her husband) believes it’s random and could apply to anyone at any time (so no real “soul mate”), and Hae Sung (Nora’s childhood friend) believes in its authenticity, telling Nora, “I’ll see you then,” implying there’s a possibility that he and Nora will end up together in the next life due to In-Yun, and that it’s already begun.

But the title, “Past Lives” can mean a number of things.  Arthur is married to a woman who was brought up in a different country, culture, language, and ideology than he was.  When Hae Sung comes to visit, he’s faced with the sense that he’s the outsider in his wife’s life.   As Nora’s husband, he’s the one who’s caught between understanding for his wife’s emotional upheaval upon reuniting with her first love and working through his own insecurities about losing the woman he loves to someone from her “past life.” In one poignant scene, he tells his wife that if he were to write the story, “I would be the evil white American husband standing in the way of [his wife’s] destiny.” This movie has the potential to be achingly and palpably heartbreaking.

The movie was written and directed by first-time director Celine Song who based the movie on real events from her life.

Cast members include: Teo Yoo plays Jung Hae Sung, the South Korean boy who travels to America decades later to see his childhood sweetheart. Greta Lee plays Nora (Na) Young, the immigrant who establishes her life in New York. John Magaro plays Nora’s husband, Arthur Zaturansky,

Overall, the class gives this film a 4.7 out of 5.