In Seoul, 2 childhood friends are separated when 1 emigrates to Canada. They reconnect twice over 24 years, once online in their twenties and once when he visits her in New York a decade later. Both times, they have to face the life they didn't live. It is the most emotionally precise film about adult longing in years.
Past Lives is a 2023 drama and romance film directed by Celine Song. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (3 narrative and 1 cinematography), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Moonlight uses several of the same techniques.
Watching events from a measured distance with no swelling music, tear-jerking close-ups or showy camera moves. The film trusts what happens to carry the weight on its own.
How this film uses it
Shabier Kirchner's camera stays on faces without using close-ups to underline emotion. It watches conversations without cutting back and forth for emphasis, and it follows the characters through New York at a distance that feels respectful. That restraint gives the film its emotional weight, because you have to feel what the camera declines to point out.
Where to see it
The bar scene where Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur sit together. It is 3 people sitting together while the camera watches and never tells you what to feel. That restraint makes the scene almost unbearable.
Building a love story around 3 people, where each pair has its own relationship and the third person always gets in the way. Your sympathy shifts because each of them has a fair claim.
How this film uses it
Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur don't form a conventional love triangle. There is no rivalry and no deception. This triangle is about time. Hae Sung stands for what Nora was, and Arthur stands for what she chose to become. Nora is the person standing between her past self and her present life.
Where to see it
The bar scene. All 3 characters are together for the first time, so you can finally see the shape of the triangle. What the film is saying about choice and loss is now out in the open.
Ending the film where it started, or with a scene that echoes the opening. The repeat shows what has changed, or suggests the cycle will keep going.
How this film uses it
The film opens on the 3 characters in a bar, watched by strangers who guess at how they are related. The film then goes back through 24 years and lives toward that bar. When it arrives, you are inside it, knowing everything you didn't know at the start. The circle folds the film's time together.
Where to see it
The strangers' speculation at the opening and the bar scene later in the film. It is the same moment, seen first from outside and then from inside. The circle completes the film's point about which lives you can know and which you can't.
Shooting with a handheld camera so the frame shakes and moves with the action. This documentary-style look, called cinema vérité, puts you uncomfortably close to the character.
How this film uses it
Kirchner goes handheld in the film's most intimate scenes (the video calls, the walk through New York), which makes them feel like something being watched as it happens. The handheld movement tells you this is happening right now, and that it matters the way real things matter.
Where to see it
Hae Sung and Nora walking through New York. The handheld camera follows them at close range, and the movement makes the scene feel overheard.
Questions
Past Lives: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does Past Lives use?
CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in Past Lives (2023): Observational Restraint, Romantic Triangle Geometry, Circular Structure and Handheld Cinema Vérité.
Who directed Past Lives?
Celine Song directed Past Lives, released in 2023. CineCode also covers Materialists (2025).
What films are similar to Past Lives?
Films that share techniques with Past Lives include Moonlight (2016), 12 Years a Slave (2013), La La Land (2016), Before Sunrise (1995).
