Ifs, Buts, and Maybes: Celine Song’s Past Lives

There’s a word in Korean: 인연 [in-yeon]. It means ‘providence’ or ‘fate’. But it’s specifically about relationships between people. I think it comes from Buddhism and Reincarnation. It’s an in-yeon If two strangers even walk past each other on the street and their clothes accidently brush, because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it’s because there have been eight thousand layers of in-yeon over eight thousand lifetimes.

Past Lives directed by Celine Song ©2023/A24

If you leave something behind, you gain something too. Probably my favorite quote from a script that is by all accounts, almost entirely poetic. It’s a blanket statement with applications in so many aspects of life, notably the three central themes of this romantic drama: the immigrant experience, lost soulmates, and a good ol’ love story. It stuck with me because it’s obviously contradictory; when Ji Hye Moon’s character says it, it’s meant to be a throwaway comment to make her family’s decision to emigrate from a place they’ve called home…