A stranger speculates about the dynamic between three people in a New York bar. Two men – one American, the other Korean – sit either side of a sassy Korean-American woman who is speaking intensely to the Korean while the other man is sidelined. Is she with the Korean and the third person is just a bored friend, or is she with the American and brazenly starting an affair?

This soulful story about immigrant yearning is too nuanced for commonplace explanations, and channels almost indefinable feelings from a real New York moment experienced by writer and director Celine Song, a Korean-American playwright making her first film.

In South Korea as 12-year-olds, Nora and Hae Sung are best friends. Nora cries a lot, in this case because Hae Sung came top of the class and she was only second. “I don’t cry when you beat me,” he says, but his argument is of no interest. She tells her parents they will marry one day because she will tell him they have to, but Nora moves with her family to Toronto and they lose touch.

The story unfolds slowly but intensely over two more timeframes. In their early 20s, Nora (a gorgeous, breakout performance from Greta Lee) lives in New York and discovers Hae Sung (Teo Yoo, from Decision to Leave) has been looking for her online. They reunite over Zoom and are drawn together by their shared past and who they have become. But he is going to China to learn Mandarin and she is a writer with a residency in upstate New York.

They drift again and Nora meets Arthur (John Magaro, from Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow), a gentle, loving man and a fellow writer. They marry young, partly so she can get an American green card, and are going about their lives when Hae Sung gets back in touch. Now in his 30s, he is coming to New York. “He is coming to see me,” Nora tells Arthur, almost with a sense of dread.

What follows is so much more interesting than a love triangle, or a woman choosing between two men.

Nora was always livelier and more ambitious, and would have struggled as a Korean wife; Hae Sung knows that and loves her all the more for it. They meet now as precious friends and greet each other with unalloyed joy, smiling tenderly into each other’s faces with delight and recognition.

Nora introduces us to the Korean concept of in-yun, which describes multiple layers of interconnectedness between people so deep that to brush against someone in the street is the product of countless interactions in past lives. The idea isn’t laboured but expands our understanding of the myriad ways in which people connect. Nora’s choices led her to New York and a life with Arthur but she is emotionally floored by her reunion with Hae Sung, who is handsome, gentle and adoring. They see in each other their own past lives and will live on in each other forever.

Past Lives is strikingly to look at and showcases New York’s East Village, cloaking it in the glamour it has when seen through the eyes of a stranger. The casting is wonderful and Nora’s easy radiance bounces off Hae Sung’s withdrawn conservatism. Meanwhile, Arthur is kind, crumpled and unassuming, and determined to stay an adult in the face of a threat.

A film that focuses so much on choices and meaning rather than plot may deter some conventional theatre-goers, but it is a breakthrough as a lyrical and sophisticated modern romance exploring the painful truth that no relationship claims us all.

Past Lives is showing now in cinemas nationally.

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