Folks are swooning over this wistful love-triangle drama but is Past Lives streaming just yet?
A semiautobiographical tale from playwright-turned-filmmaker Celine Song, Past Lives stars Greta Lee (Russian Doll, The Morning Show) as Nora, a Seoul-born woman now living in New York who is wavering between the solidity of her marriage to her husband Arthur (First Cow's John Magaro) and the nostalgia of her Korean childhood love Hae Sung (Leto's Teo Yoo).
It's not your traditional love triangle—at one point, Arthur winkingly quips, "I know. I know. In the story, I would be the evil white American husband standing in the way of destiny"—but it's that lack of convention that drew Lee to the project.
"It felt like such a radical departure from the more conventional romantic movies that I'd seen," she told Entertainment Weekly. "And to have that cultural specificity of [Nora] being Korean and the realities of living in America as an Asian woman — having that all incorporated into this piece but never in service of having to explain a racialized state, it was just in order to tell a very universal story about love — I read it and was like, how did [Song] manage to do this? I immediately fell in love with it."
Want to fall in love with it too? Here's everything you need to know about streaming Past Lives.
Is 'Past Lives' streaming?
As of press time, A24 hasn't released any information on when Past Lives will be available to stream. When it does though, it will likely hit Paramount+ with Showtime, as that's the streaming service where other recent A24 titles have wound up, including The Whale, Pearl, The Inspection and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Past Lives is, however, available on VOD since August 2023. You can purchase the film digitally on platforms including Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and iTunes for $19.99.
The Celine Song swooner is also still in select theaters if you want to see it the old-fashioned way. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and was released in the United States on Friday, June 2.
'Past Lives' plot: what is the movie about?
Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.
Watch the 'Past Lives' trailer:
Who is in the 'Past Lives' cast?
- Greta Lee as Nora
- Seung Ah Moon as young Nora
- Teo Yoo as Hae Sung
- Seung Min Yim as young Hae Sung
- John Magaro as Arthur
- Ji Hye Yoon as Nora's mom
- Choi Won-young as Nora's dad
- Min Young Ahn as Hae Sung's mom
- Jonica T. Gibbs as Janice
- Emily Cass McDonnell as Rachel
- Federico Rodriguez as Robert
- Conrad Schott as Peter
- Kristen Sieh as Heather
