Celine Song’s debut feature is a quiet and lyrical ode to inyeon, the Korean term for “the miracle of being in the same room together at the same time.”

Triggered by a moment in Song’s life, where she and her husband met up with an old flame, inyeon for all of them, we open with this scene. Nora (Greta Lee) sits at a bar, listening attentively to childhood friend Hae-sung (Teo Yoo), while her American husband, Arthur (John Magaro), sits alongside her. An unseen observer, like us, speculates as to the relationship between the three.

Flashback 24 years and we see Nora (called Na-young then) as a 12-year-old realising that her friendship with Hae-sung has become romantic. They hold hands, but it is not to last as Nora’s family emigrate to Canada, leaving South Korea and Hae-sung behind.

We see Nora and Hae-sung reconnect 12 years and then 24 years later, bringing us to the opening moment when Hae-sung visits Manhattan where Nora and Arthur live.

Writing it out, it sounds prosaic and pedestrian, but Song, with her theatre director eye and lived experience of the dislocation of immigrant culture, shapes a poetic meditation on the paths we choose and the people we become. Speaking after the film, she talked about the film being about three goodbyes and how sometimes we get to revisit who we were as a child and change the past. She’s not afraid to let the audience sit with silence and the framing of each scene is beautiful, as well as the intersections and resurrections of those three goodbyes.

The three leads are well chosen with Lee in particular, caring the emotional weight of the story. Song feels she has found her medium, and I can’t wait to see what else she creates.

Director: Celine Song
Origin: South Korea, USA (2023)
Language: English, Korean with English subtitles

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