By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

Have you ever wondered whether there might be a finite number of people in the world and that all of us have past lives that occasionally bubble to the surface when paths cross?

• Read on for reasons including why this is never afraid to disappoint and is 1 of the most perfectly executed films of the year

It’s a sentiment better expressed in Korean as ‘in-yun’, the bringing together of people who were lovers in past lives, and this film explores the idea that protagonists Na-young/Nora and Hae-sung, who were childhood friends split apart geographically when 1 moved from Korea to Canada, view their shared youth that way.

At the film’s opening we join the 3 leads, Hae-sung, Nora and her American husband, in a New York bar in the early hours where an unseen narrator is heard wondering what relationships they have with each other: is the American the Koreans’ tour guide, are they co-workers?

We go back in time to South Korea where 12-year-olds Hae-sung and Na-young form a bond before her family decides they need to go west to pursue their artistic careers.

As 24-year-olds the pair look each other up on social media and start to speak regularly via Skype and for a while it looks like they might try to renew their friendship but life and their different cultures get in the way and they don’t reunite.

The bar scene is from their lives now in their mid-30s when Hae-sung visits New York, reignites his spark with Nora and meets her husband as the film dwells on different roads travelled and what-might-have-beens as well as the realities of the present situation.

The writing is so self-assured that it really doesn’t feel like this is playwright Celine Song’s debut film as both writer and director and she clearly isn’t afraid of silences because often the most moving moments here are wordless.

There are awkward silences: John Magaro as Nora’s husband Arthur conveys perfectly the frustration of wondering whether his partner has more of a connection with her childhood sweetheart than with him.

Song is also not afraid of separating her leads within the same shot and even the 2 words in the title are shown far apart to perhaps reflect new meaning onto them.

Past Lives is part-subtitled which much enhances the subject matter as we are invited to feel as excluded as Arthur is when the couple we are rooting for reunites.

Past Lives is unflinchingly real however and never afraid to disappoint and remains 1 of the most perfectly executed films of the year.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Past Lives Tickets
• Have you seen Past Lives and what did you think?
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