PAST LIVES - Mark Reviews Movies

Past Lives, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 8, 2023

The debut of writer/director Celine Song, Past Lives is a film of multiple contradictions. It is patient and almost relaxed in the pacing of its scenes, depicting little moments in the lives of two characters and their relationship, but relatively speaking, the film also hurries its narrative, in that it gives us a sense of the passage of 24 years in those lives within the course of about 100 minutes.

It is achingly romantic, because it's about a connection that somehow and despite all odds lasts and remains deeply felt for more than two decades, but Song's story is also fundamentally pragmatic, in that it understands the bonds and emotions of our youth belong there. Any time we wax nostalgic about something or someone, it means we have become older, more mature, and, hopefully, wiser about those times, places, and feelings.

There's another contradiction to that, though, because such memories are always with us, even as they belong to the past. They existed then, but in some form, they still exist now. It's likely they'll always exist in some corner of the mind and in some deep place of the heart, and there's nothing anyone can do about that.

This is the story of two people who find themselves living with and—importantly, not by some twist of fate but through decisive action—within that connection, well past the point at which it probably should have faded from memory. To call the connection between Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), classmates from school in South Korea, love might be accurate, if one can hazard to call a mutual crush between two 12-year-olds such a thing or imagine that bond between two people in their early 20s, living in different parts of the world. In those specific moments, it must feel like love, to be sure. Moments, though, don't last.

Song captures that dichotomy throughout this tale, which begins with an act of people-watching by some unseen patrons at a bar. It's us, really, as we see but cannot hear whatever conversation is occurring between Nora and Hae Sung, accompanied by a third man, at a New York City bar in the early morning hours. Are they a couple? Are they tourists visiting the city? How does this other guy figure into this?

The mystery is blatantly put forth in this introduction. The strength of the story, the development of these characters, and the nature of these relationships, though, is in how many deeper questions Song leaves us with, even after her film answers those most obvious, seemingly pertinent questions.

As for Nora and Hae Sung, we meet them after they have met each other in middle school, before a young Nora (played by Seung Ah Moon) took an English name and when a young Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) had a most obvious crush on his classmate. She likes him, too, as her mother (played by Ji Hye Yoon) tells Hae Sung's mother (played by Min Young Ahn) while the kids are on a "date" in the park.

It's most telling, by the way, that a young Hae Sung talks about Nora a lot, according to his mom, but doesn't actually communicate his feelings for her in a direct way. This is a film filled with such little details, such as how Nora would feel comfortable enough to cry in front of Hae Sung. It's only in retrospect, with the wisdom we can only hope to obtain, that those details reveal the picture between the lines of and words left unspoken in this story, such as when and in whose presence Nora does finally cry again.

Anyway, Nora and her family immigrate to Canada, and a devastated Hae Sung can only muster, "Bye," after their final, silent walk home together. Twelve years pass. Nora is living in New York, working toward becoming a playwright. Hae Sung is still in Seoul, living with his parents and attending college after his mandatory military service. Nora looks up some old classmates one day, and Hae Sung pops into mind, as the boy on whom she had "a massive crush." As it turns out, he has been looking for her, too. They reconnect via video calls, and it's as if no time has passed.

Most of the story takes place another 12 years after this virtual reunion, as the conversations become a routine, only to diminish, and the relationship becomes a bit more than daily calls, only to dissipate because each of them has other plans and neither can quite say what they want to. Since there is something of a mystery here, the specifics of the characters' lives are best left undisclosed here.

However, it should be no surprise to reveal that, upon meeting more than 20 years after the last time they saw each other, Nora and Hae Sung retain that easy connection, that familiar way of speaking to each other, and that look of regret and maybe a tinge of longing whenever their eyes meet. Song's camera simply watches them, as they tour the city and catch up on what life has or hasn't been for them, while correctly trusting the actors, against the backdrop Shabier Kirchner's postcard cinematography, to vocalize and physicalize two decades' worth of holding on to a feeling. It's one that neither quite understands and both of them never had a chance to explore.

If this makes it sound as if the film is heading in a particular direction, it is, but it also isn't. It gives us the sense of romance, to be sure, because it's almost impossible considering the chemistry between Lee, who's quite good in portraying the way Nora juggles a kind of friendly diplomacy and the confused feelings she has with Hae Sung, and Yoo, whose face serves as a naked vessel of vulnerability, sadness, and loneliness.

The other, unexpected part of the story is that third man from the opening scene at the bar. He's Arthur (John Magaro), who seems like a third wheel to the entire narrative—until a scene in which he openly recognizes himself in that role.

In that moment, we realize Song's narrative isn't nearly as simple and straightforward as it might appear on the surface. Past Lives digs deeper—into the past, such as with one heartbreaking edit during the film's one-take climax, and into the human heart, trying its best to hold and weigh loves of the past and the present.

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