PAST LIVES (12A)

Korean-Canadian playwright Celine Song’s luminous filmmaking debut beautifully depicts and delicately probes a love story that stretches over 24 years and crosses continents. The strong childhood attachment between Na Young and Hae Sung is torn apart when her family leaves Seoul to start a new life in the US. Reconnecting online as adults, they don’t meet in person for another decade when Hae Sung visits New York for one fateful week. With Na Young, now Nora, married to fellow-writer Arthur, the pair reunite to consider notions of destiny (the Korean concept of “in-yun” that brings together those who were lovers in a past life), love, and the choices that make a life.