Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as...
WHAT I LIKED: Most romance stories are about a couple who are "meant to be together," inevitably falling in love by the end, but Celine Song's 'Past Lives,' is a beautifully honest film about how there's no true path, and how chance is actually the biggest factor in how we live our lives and who we end up loving.
The story follows two childhood best friends Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Na Young (Greta Lee) reuniting over the phone 12 years after Na Young (now Nora) left Seoul, and then 12 years after that when Hae Sung visits her and her husband (John Magaro) in New York. Both times they have obvious chemistry and an undeniable love for each other, but other things in their lives get in the way of their being together. After the first reconnection, Hae Sung is travelling to Shanghai so the pair can't see each other in person, then the second time, Nora has a husband whom she loves and a life in New York that makes her happy.
The fact they're both hurt by those obstacles makes it a heart-breaking watch to some extent. But in the end, the fact they agree they can live wonderfully fulfilled lives without being together makes for an usually profound and honest watch, as it makes the point that there's no such thing as what's meant to be, and that we should love the life we live if it's making us happy.
That quietly profound message only translates though because on the one hand Song's writing is so real, but also because she leaves so much of the talking to the physicality of Teo and Lee's amazingly nuanced performances. Nora is an ambitious character with a zest for life, and Hae Sung is anxious and contemplative, but both of them act differently when they're together; not only laughing and teasing each other, but also feeling at home in a different way. Again, the film recognises that no version of themselves is "true," just that there are multitudes within them both which are equally valid.
That, especially when coupled with the beautifully grounded sense of place that Song develops with her camera and the sound design, makes for a truly transcendent film that brilliantly rejects the Western cinematic tropes of fate or a true path for a more grounded, humanistic piece of art.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It would have been nice to get to know the pair more outside of their meetings with each other, as that would have allowed us to better connect to the lives that they ultimately choose to stay with.
VERDICT: Celine Song's 'Past Lives,' is a quietly profound film that has its wonderful characters come to reject cinema's typical ideas of fate to embrace a more real, human view of love and life.
