Cinematic Releases: Past Lives (2023) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of A24

Korean-Canadian playwright and screenwriter Celine Song first broke into the theater scene around 2020 with her plays Endlings and The Seagull on The Sims 4 as well as writing for the television program The Wheel of Time a year later, gradually working her way up to ostensibly her plainly autobiographical debut feature film Past Lives.  

Much like the film’s protagonist herself, Celine Song was born in South Korea before emigrating to Canada and eventually landing in America, currently living in New York with her husband working as a playwright.  With her first feature, picked up by A24 following its Sundance premiere, Past Lives (not to be confused with the suffix of a certain Apichatpong Weerasethakul film) is an achingly heartfelt multigenerational tale of romantic longing that feels firmly footed somewhere between the work of Hong Sang-soo, Sofia Coppola or more recently Lulu Wang.

 
Childhood pals Na Young and Hae Sung lean heavily on one another in South Korean grade school but as their bond deepens Nora’s parents decide to emigrate to Canada and they drift apart as they move on with their own separate lives.  Twelve years pass and Na Young (now an adult played by Greta Lee) changes her name to Nora and becomes a playwright now living in New York City, meanwhile Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) still in Seoul is studying engineering but never stopped thinking about his childhood sweetheart.  

On a whim they reconnect on Facebook and soon begin talking regularly on Skype for weeks on end before Nora realizing she’s going nowhere decides to cut things off for awhile as they both focus instead on their respective careers.  Another twelve years pass and Nora is now married to nice novelist Arthur (John Magaro) where they reside in their New York apartment but not before Hae Sung makes an impromptu visit to the newlyweds and their childhood memories and feelings for each other are conjured up all over again.
 
A bittersweet and poignant, modestly heartrending story of what might’ve been between two people’s lives in the past, present and future while also an expression of writer-director Celine Song’s own sense of fading roots with her country of origin as her own story echoes Nora’s, Past Lives is tender and gently subtle while hinting at emotional cores that want to cry out in sadness.  Much like Lost in Translation, the feelings of friendship wanting to blossom into something more are present without ever veering into overt consummation, instead focusing on the yearning and perhaps misgivings people have when they approach crossroads.  

Take for instance scenes of them walking and touring New York together and the lifelong friends end up outside of a carnival and the camera holds on them gazing at each other like the driver and Irene in Drive, basking in each other’s light not wanting to lose the moment.  You can feel in their friendship a romantic tension and the film flirts with the notion of adultery but never quite goes there, letting the audience feel their longings playing against the choices they made.

 
Much of the film’s low hum of heartbreak stems from the Antiguan cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, best known for his work on Steve McQueen’s Small Axe films, who films Seoul, Canada and New York with warmth and intimacy.  Not for some time has New York City looked so cozy on film, even in nighttime shots wandering through the city streets.  Scenes of the lifelong friends together on a ferry boat overlooking the Hudson River have the scenic beauty of a travelogue.  Meanwhile the soft electronic score by Grizzly Bear musicians Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen turn over a score that funnels in such weathers of aching love you can feel your heart dropping out.  One of the most striking moments involves the three of them meeting together for drinks and the soundtrack blossoms into a sad song as Nora and Hae Sung speak exclusively in Korean to each other and for a second you feel what could’ve been between these two.
 
Of course the film wouldn’t be nearly as impactful without the strengths of the two leads played by Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse voice actress Greta Lee and Decision to Leave actor Teo Yoo who imbue the young friends with believable understated emotion that somehow evades the cliches of other like-minded romantic dramas.  Greta Lee’s presence and confidence onscreen clearly is intended to echo that of the film’s writer-director Celine Song and Teo Yoo who once played Viktor Tsoi in the Russian rock drama Leto makes Hae Sung into a conflicted and sad figure who clearly loves Nora but knows neither of them are in a position to formally declare it for one another.  Also striking is First Cow actor John Magaro as Nora’s Jewish-American husband Arthur who delivers a sensitive and thoughtful performance as a devoted partner who wants to help but also knows there’s only so much he can do to aid what his wife is going through.
 
In limited theatrical release from A24, Past Lives is intimate and personal but with a vastness to its scope with a decades-spanning romantic vibe shared between two friends that wants to fully connect but sadly knows it must hold back.  With gifted, subtle performances that feel real rather than another cinematic contrivance with rich yet sensitively rendered dialogue as well as integral passages of silence, this bittersweet light romantic dramedy leaves the viewer with a lot to ponder and a wealth of emotional complexity.  

In other hands we would’ve seen the standard Hollywood cliché of these two who were “destined to be together” actually going ahead with it, but as a personal expression from writer-director Celine Song it sidesteps this and becomes a meditation on the decisions we make in life that perhaps change our paths and who we end up being as adults.  Few, if any romantic slice-of-life dramas, ever get this existential and in turn emotionally affecting.  All in all, a striking debut from an extraordinary new cinematic storytelling talent.

--Andrew Kotwicki