In - Yun

The other day I finally watched Past Lives. It had been sitting in my watchlist for a while, like a bookmark I was saving for the right moment. And wow. What a film.
A story of lost love, so delicate, so sophisticated… and somehow both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I know — heartwarming and lost love probably shouldn’t be in the same sentence. But here we go.

It reminded me of 96, the Tamil film with Vijay Sethupathi and Trisha. That same ache. That quiet storm of emotions that you don’t even realise is building up until it just sits on your chest and won’t leave. Both films are about love, yes — but also about timing. About the lives that happen in parallel to our own. And the ones that don’t.

But what stayed with me most was this Korean word they kept going back to — In Yun.

Nora, in the film, explains In Yun as this idea that when people meet, it's not random. That every brush, every glance, is built on layers and layers of past connections. Even just two strangers passing each other on the street — that too has meaning. That too has history.
And if two people fall in love, it’s not something that just happens. It’s been happening for lifetimes.

It’s one of those words that doesn’t have a proper English translation. But you feel it anyway. It just… makes sense.

Later in the film, there’s a moment where Arthur, Nora’s husband, says to her:
“You dream in a language I can’t understand.”

And that line just hit me.
Because he’s not angry. He’s not blaming her. He’s just… seeing her. Trying to understand a version of her that maybe he never will.
Nora, who left Korea and made a life in the States, still carries pieces of her past. Her language, her childhood, her people. Even in sleep.

That part of her — Arthur can’t reach. And he knows it.

I think that’s what Past Lives really did for me. It put words to something that I’ve felt, but never really known how to explain. That quiet closeness you sometimes feel with people. That feeling that maybe you’ve known them before you actually met. Or maybe you almost knew them in some other version of your life.

That’s In Yun, I guess.

Maybe we all have our own In Yun. Some stories that paused instead of ending. Some connections that don’t belong to just this lifetime.
And some people we meet not to keep — but just to remember.