Past Lives

➤Rated PG-13 for strong language
➤Streaming

When 12-year-old Na Young moves with her family from Korea to Canada, she leaves behind her best friend, Hae Sung, a boy in her class. “If you leave something behind, you gain something too,” Na Young’s mother says, summing up the theme of Past Lives (Korean with English subtitles). Director/writer Celine Song finds the perfect pitch of earnestness and quiet in this autobiographical movie that ruminates on friendship and fate.

Twelve years pass and the two friends, now in their 20s, reconnect on Skype and rekindle their childhood affection. But Na Young can’t bear the distance between them. They drift apart again, and soon she marries an American and settles in New York City.

Emotional momentum builds in the movie’s third act when the old friends cross paths once more in New York City and Na Young is faced with what she’s gained and lost from her past decisions.

She interprets the course of her life in terms of in-yun, a Korean word for fate, specifically that friends and spouses are destined for each other long before they meet. In-yun is rooted in a Buddhist idea of reincarnation, but Past Lives reflects on the theme of fate without letting the conversations grow ponderous.

The film offers a concise meditation about the choices we make and the consequences of those choices. Past Lives doesn’t hurry, and this beautiful movie showcases the grandeur of New York City in a way reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Manhattan, thanks in part to a beautiful two-minute tracking shot.

Past Lives is rated PG-13 for occasional bad language, but it’s a moving story about friendship and the passage of time.