You know what that movie would be because you have seen it many times before. A love triangle in which a third wheel stands in the way of destiny, fate, or, indeed, the Korean concept of In-Yun. This archetype is at best a fool and at worst a villain. Either way, he remains an obstacle who must be overcome—and he’s often played by James Marsden or Patrick Dempsey. Neither Arthur or Nora are screenwriters, but they are implicitly aware of the Hollywood version of their life’s story, and by extension so is writer-director Celine Song whose debut film in Past Lives is an achingly beautiful triumph.

Arthur’s cheerless awareness of that alternative series of events is one of the many things that gives Past Lives its delicate grace too. Played by John Magaro as a proper bearded millennial who’s somehow squeaked out an existence beyond the wilds of Brooklyn, Arthur is not our main character nor the most important to Past Lives’ story. This film truly is the love story Arthur described, and it’s between childhood sweethearts all grown up: Nora (Greta Lee), whose family moved to the West when she was a child, and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who stayed behind.

Theirs is the bitterest of bittersweet romances, albeit one that can never truly be realized in the saccharine way Arthur jokes about (and perhaps fears). Life is a series of choices, some made by us and some made for us. Cumulatively, however, they amount to a set of memories, thoughts, ideas, and finally an identity. In the case of Nora and Hae Sung, those identities became a chasm which can never be filled, even when they are at last in the same city for the first time in 20 years. A defining aspect of that, of course, is that Nora is married to Arthur, a man she loves, even as she is haunted by the road not taken every time it beckons to her inside Hae Sung’s sad eyes.

Arthur is the obstacle of the love story we are watching, but he is also the catalyst for Past Lives’ greater complexities. As Nora scoffs at her husband during his aforementioned musings on “the story,” she obviously is not going to throw away the life she has built with him in New York City to run away to Seoul with a man she never really knew, and certainly hasn’t spoken to in the last 12 years. That’s not how life works. Plus, she has rehearsals coming up!

Yet as a storyteller himself, Arthur sees the appeal of why it should work that way, and why he should suddenly feel like the odd man out in his own marriage. As played by Magaro, Arthur is a sweet, deeply empathetic man who knows the practicalities of life. But unlike his wife, who insists throughout the movie that she never cried after moving to Canada, Arthur is in touch with the impracticalities of our very natures too. Which puts him on the same wavelength of the film these people find themselves trapped in.

The first love who got away has come to New York City; and while Hae Sung has no illusions about reconnecting romantically with Nora, he still is drawn enough to the idea of her to fly halfway around the world.  He seeks the closure he never had when they failed to say goodbye the last time they met face-to-face, absent any screens or laptop cameras. If Arthur is any kind of success as an author, he must recognize the human need of such a journey.

Danofgeek