If you like the slow burn, and a love story with A LOT of nuance, you will really like Past Lives. If you don’t – honestly, I can’t help you there – because this is a beautiful, nuanced, slow burn about what could have been, what might have been, what doesn’t seem to be ever possible, but yet you still wonder if it still could be…at some time.

I mean – that’s what I came away from after watching it (and I did actually get to see it the same weekend I posted about it not being in the Midwest (but they just hadn’t updated the website I think). 

The way they played these parts, the subtle looks and phrases–understanding the thought of being in a relationship, looking back, and understanding the differences between the life that sometimes lives in your mind–or your heart–and the pragmatic life that helps guide decisions.

That last scene, where she walks alone and just falls into her husband’s arms–it’s just heartbreaking–you feel everything in so many ways–the loss she felt at her “past life”, the remorse she felt for wanting what she couldn’t and how it affected her husband, and this thought that maybe, if just a little different timing, because there was still a piece of her that wanted that, that in some ways she was ready for it. 

But in the end–who she really was–what really motivated her–it was something she couldn’t escape.

Beautiful. Moving. See it.