Look before and after and pine for what is not

Playwright Celine Song was born in South Korea and immigrated to Markham (outside Toronto) when she was around 12. Later, she studied playwriting at Columbia University in New York, where she currently lives with her American novelist husband. In her filmmaking debut, Past Lives, Song mines her own life to craft a romantic drama about destiny, regret, commitment and the what-ifs that follow us around. The film was one of this year's Sundance darlings, and it's easy to see why.

Past Lives is the kind of movie that attracts adjectives such as exquisite, lyrical and soulful, words that, for many, translate as slow, obtuse and self-involved. How you read it will depend entirely on your tolerance for restrained romantic yearning as a state of being. There's no denying Song's refined storytelling, though there's a distant undercurrent, a clinical coolness, to the film that gives it an observational tone. Song's observations may be acute, but they remain on the outside looking in.

Song plays out what is essentially a love triangle drama in three parts. Part One begins with Nora and Hae-sung as a couple of school kids in Seoul, sharing an unusually tight bond. They are separated when Nora's family emigrates. Part Two sees Nora and Hae-sung as digital pen pals, constantly chatting via Skype after reconnecting on Facebook (how very 2000s!) 12 years later. Finally, they meet in person in Manhattan, for the first time in over 20 years. Nora arrives with her husband, Arthur (John Magaro, The Umbrella Academy), a Jewish writer she met at an artists' residency in Montauk.