This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
I’ve never believed in destiny and fate. I didn’t group up believing these things from a philosophical point of view. My mantra is: ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ and it just stops there — no further explanations. People might enter your life and stay there permanently or temporarily. You’ll make countless memories with them. Even if it’s a happy or sad memory, it’s an experience that you will take as a lesson or remember for years to come.
It’s rare to see a movie that hinges on the possibilities of fate and where it might have taken you if you had gone down a different path. I had high expectations for Celine Song’s Past Lives, which premiered earlier at Sundance but I never got to watch it. I never believed in destiny and fate, but Nora and Hae Sung’s 20-year-old ‘will-they-or-won’t-they’ journey had me thinking about my childhood sweetheart.
As children, Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) and Jung Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) were the best of friends. They also had a crush on each other. Before Na Young’s family emigrate to Canada from South Korea, they got out on a date, chaperoned by their parents, of course. Na Young’s mother wants her daughter to have good memories of her home country and her friends. After they migrate, Na Young and Hae Sung drift apart. Twelve years later, Na Young — now Nora (Greta Lee) — migrates to New York to become an aspiring playwright. She reconnects with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) on Facebook, an engineering student in Seoul. During their first Skype session, he admits that he has never stopped looking for Nora and soon, they rekindle their friendship despite different time zones and crappy Internet connections.
The problem, however, is that, even though they want to see each other in person, none of them makes the first step. With Nora on her way to a writer’s retreat and Hae Sung moving to China to learn Mandarin, they decide to part ways. Another twelve years pass and their lives have changed drastically. Nora is married to Arthur (John Magaro), a writer she met on the retreat, and Hae Sung has broken up with his long-time girlfriend. Almost 20 years later, Hae Sung finally visits New York for a vacation, but he has another motive: to meet his childhood sweetheart. It brings up old feelings about their destiny and fate, which begin to complicate as his departure comes nearer.
After I finished watching Past Lives, it made me think about my childhood sweetheart. I met him in kindergarten, over 20 years ago. It was an innocent friendship, but I remember having feelings for him as a six-year-old. It was strange. I was teased about it by my cousins. I had to repeatedly convince them he wasn’t my ‘boyfriend’ because I had no idea what it meant at that time. I don’t remember a lot of the memories from my kindergarten years but one of my recollections was that he and I were put in the same groups. We sat at the same table, which meant that we had lunch together.
It’s strange looking back at my childhood and thinking: was it normal for me to have a connection and a close friendship with someone like him? Yes, even if I don’t remember any of our conversations. I remember that I liked spending time with him at school. It was fun and there wasn’t any drama. We were put in the same classrooms for three years, so we had the same activities. I vaguely remember that he and I were close, but the strangest thing about this is that I don’t know if I meant anything to him.
After kindergarten was done, we moved to primary school. My classmates and I, whom I had known for three years, were scattered amongst different classrooms. My childhood sweetheart and I weren’t classmates anymore. I remembered seeing him around the school but none of us ever attempted to be friends. We drifted apart. I had my group of friends and so did he. Our paths separated and we never spoke to each other again. The last time I saw him was around 2005. I don’t think I made any effort to ask around his whereabouts. He had sort of slipped my mind and I continued with my life, while he was lost somewhere in the world following his own path.
Years later, after I was finally on Facebook, I reconnected with some of my primary school friends. It was nice touching base with my primary school friends after moving to the next stage: secondary school and college. As I reconnected and found my friends’ profiles on Facebook, my mind went back to my childhood sweetheart. I wonder if I could find him on Facebook, I thought. I scrolled endlessly through my friends’ list trying to find his profile, but to no avail. It was unsuccessful and I realised that I had to give up this search for good. Perhaps our predestined bonds stopped at kindergarten.
Still, the concept of predestined destiny has a far more important meaning in Past Lives that is presented with quietly wonderful and devastating results. In the movie, sitting outside the backyard at the writer’s retreat in Montauk, Nora explains to Arthur the meaning of in-yeon, a Korean word that derives from Buddhism’s belief in a bond between two people. This connection doesn’t necessarily have to be between lovers — it can be between friends too. “If two strangers walk by each other on the street and their clothes accidentally brush, that means there have been 8,000 layers of in-yeon between them,” Nora says to Arthur. They are meant for each other, in a way.
This whirlwind of emotions and the idea of in-yeon is discussed further when Hae Sung arrives in New York. There are complicated feelings between Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur, the latter feeling akin to a villain in the story — the person between two childhood sweethearts getting in the way of their supposed romantic relationship. This isn’t supposed to be the case, as Nora assures Arthur that she isn’t attracted to Hae Sung. He has always seen him as her childhood friend whom she had a crush on and the guy she talked to on the screen many years ago.
There is, however, an unspoken bond between Nora and Hae Sung. They know that they will never be together — their romance was only present for a fleeting moment. After reuniting in New York, Hae Sung and Nora question their predestined bond: in-yeon, and the possibilities of what could have happened if they had stayed together. There are so many layers to Nora and Hae Sung’s possible existence that left me reeling and thinking about my childhood sweetheart.
I asked myself: What if? What if things had turned out differently? What if we had kept in touch in primary school? We might have been friends or best friends or even more. Would we have been the endgame? Would I have benefited from an in-yeon? It seems impossible now. I’m only left with countless fantasies of our reunion. What if we meet each other again and rekindle our friendship? What if we bump into each other on the street? I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead or living in another country. I don’t even know if he felt a strong connection as I did with him, and I’m not disappointed by that. I’ve come to the realisation — after watching Past Lives — that every interaction that I’ve had with someone is sacred and intentional. My childhood sweetheart and I had our in-yeon, and that’s where it ends.
Strike Funds: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1weorhmG1H7cszY3rGHCpNYsgleegkuOSH7rD47JzSAQ/edit
Solidarity with striking film and television workers: https://freelancesolidarity.org/wga-sag-strike-solidarity/
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