In Celine Song’s soulful ‘Past Lives,’ a triangle of love, identity and destiny

By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Writer-director Celine Song’s “Past Lives” is both an uncommonly grounded love story and an unusually soulful immigrant tale. A breakout hit of the Sundance Film Festival, the A24 release is one of the year’s most acclaimed films. Greta Lee stars as a Korean-Canadian playwright who reconnects with a childhood sweetheart from her upbringing in Seoul. When he comes to New York 24 years later, Nora is happily married. The visit doesn’t erupt a melodramatic love triangle but spawns something gentler and more ineffable about love, life and identity. Song considers the movie a series of goodbyes where the first attempts don’t stick.