Movies Like
Movies Like Past Lives: The Person You Met Too Early
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
Past Lives (2023) is Celine Song's first film, and it was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro play three people in a bar in New York, two of whom met as children in Seoul. Nobody betrays anybody. That's the whole point, and it's why the film hurts.
What you're looking for after it is specific: not a love story with obstacles, but a film about timing. Two people who would have worked, in a version of their lives that didn't happen. The obstacle is not a villain or a secret, it's twelve years and a plane ticket. Everything below is chosen for that, and each entry says how close it gets and what it does differently.
The conversation films
Before Sunrise (1995) is the first thing to reach for. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet on a train, get off in Vienna, and talk until morning. Richard Linklater then made Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) with the same actors at nine year intervals, which turns the trilogy into a real time argument about whether the version of your life you didn't pick was better. Watch the first one alone if you want the ache. Watch all three if you want the answer, and know that the answer is complicated.
Certified Copy (2010) is Abbas Kiarostami's film with Juliette Binoche and the opera singer William Shimell as two people in Tuscany who may be strangers playing at being married or a married couple playing at being strangers. The film never tells you. It is the most intellectually demanding thing here and the closest to Past Lives's interest in the selves we perform for each other. Binoche won Best Actress at Cannes for it.
The Worst Person in the World (2021) follows Renate Reinsve across a decade in Oslo as she leaves a good relationship for the right reasons and a better one at the wrong time. Joachim Trier directed. Reinsve won Best Actress at Cannes, and the film was nominated for two Oscars. It's funnier than Past Lives and considerably more restless, and the coffee shop scene near the end lands in the same place as Past Lives's last block of pavement.
The ones about restraint
In the Mood for Love (2000) is Wong Kar-wai's film about two neighbors in 1962 Hong Kong who discover their spouses are having an affair with each other, and who decide not to become the thing they're grieving. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung barely touch. Leung won Best Actor at Cannes. If Past Lives's restraint is what got you, this is the summit of that. It is slower and more formal, and the ending in Angkor Wat is one of the loneliest images in cinema.
Brief Encounter (1945) is David Lean adapting Noel Coward, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as two married strangers meeting weekly in a railway station tea room. The clipped 1940s English takes a few minutes to tune into and then it is devastating. It invented the shape every film on this list uses. Eighty six minutes, and the Rachmaninoff on the soundtrack does half the work.
Lost in Translation (2003) puts Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in the same Tokyo hotel, awake at the wrong hours, in a friendship that never becomes an affair and is clearly about to. Sofia Coppola won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It shares Past Lives's central mechanic, two people in a city that belongs to neither of them, and it is much funnier. The film's treatment of Tokyo has drawn fair criticism since, which is worth knowing.
The ones that hurt in a different direction
Drive My Car (2021) is Ryusuke Hamaguchi's three hour adaptation of a Haruki Murakami story, about a theater director staging Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima with a driver he did not ask for. It won Best International Feature and was nominated for Best Picture. It's about the conversation you never had rather than the love you didn't have, and the forty minute stretch before the opening titles is a masterclass. Do not start it late at night.
Call Me by Your Name (2017) is Luca Guadagnino in northern Italy in 1983, with Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer and a summer that both of them know has an end date. James Ivory won the Oscar for the adapted screenplay. The final scene, a single unbroken shot of a face by a fire, does what Past Lives's last scene does. It is warmer, more sensual and less interested in the years afterward.
Columbus (2017) is Kogonada's debut, with John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson as two people stuck in Columbus, Indiana, walking around modernist buildings and talking about the lives they aren't living. It is the closest film in composition and patience to Past Lives, and almost nobody saw it. If you want one underseen recommendation from this page, take this one.
Aftersun (2022) is Charlotte Wells's first film, about a woman rewatching camcorder footage of a holiday in Turkey with her father, played by Paul Mescal, and slowly understanding what she was too young to see. It isn't a romance at all. It's here because it does the same thing Past Lives does with time, showing you the past and the reading of the past at once. It is quietly the saddest film on this page.
A Ghost Story (2017) has Casey Affleck under a sheet, standing in a house for what turns out to be centuries, watching Rooney Mara leave and other people arrive. David Lowery directed. There is a famous unbroken shot of a woman eating a pie that runs several minutes and it is either the moment you commit or the moment you quit. It takes Past Lives's idea about lifetimes literally.
How to choose tonight
If you want the direct match, Before Sunrise. If you want restraint at its most severe, In the Mood for Love. If you want something nobody has recommended to you before, Columbus. If you're ready to be flattened, Aftersun or Drive My Car. Where each of these streams changes; the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
If you'd rather hand the search over, our movie recommendation tool takes a few films you already love and returns a shortlist with a reason for each and where they stream.
Topics covered: romance, drama, philosophical, indie, emotional, contemporary
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.