Past Lives

If you’ve ever played Guess The Relationship while people-watching in a public place, the opening scene of Past Lives will feel lightly familiar. It’s a trick craftily pulled by playwright and first-time feature director Celine Song before she plants a sizable lump in your throat and leaves it there until its cathartic release at the film’s resolution. Past Lives is about the In-yun, a Korean concept loosely revolving around fate, shared between two (then three) people that spans two cities, two languages and 24 years. An adaptation of Song’s own experience of growth and loss after immigrating from Seoul to Toronto (and then New York), the film explores not just the complexity of different relationships and what it actually means to love someone, but the lingering effect of the parts of us left behind. This is a film of remarkable emotional maturity and depth that will strike a chord and keep it playing days after its end, and a spiritual sister piece to the other female-directed debut currently at the top of my list for 2023.

FIRST LOVE AND LOSS

It’s the yesteryear of youth (probably the 90s) in Seoul and Na Young is a competitive and ambitious 12-year-old who resents her best friend, Hae Sung, for finally beating her in a test. Hae Sung reminds her that she’s beaten him every time prior, but lets her cry without judgement all the same. The pair’s relationship blossoms (as far as it can for tweens, anyway) and their mums set them up on a date. It’s all very cute and Hae Sung’s mum expresses enthusiasm for the partnership, but Na Young’s mum informs her that the family is moving to Toronto soon for better prospects. As the kids say their goodbyes, Hae Sung continues walking sadly along the lane while Na Young, whose aspirations include somehow winning a Nobel prize, casually ascends the steps to her new life without a second thought.

Twelve years go by and no one - not even her mother - utters the name Na Young anymore. Now called Nora (Greta Lee), our flighty heroine is living her best life in New York as a student of literature. Chance curiosity sees Nora stalk her old Korean schoolmates on Facebook where she stumbles upon a post from Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) a few months prior - he was looking for “Na Young”, thus the trail had stopped cold. Reconnections via Skype ensue but both Nora and Hae Sung have work commitments, and Nora suggests that they stop talking and focus on their own lives. Nora then meets and marries fellow writer Arthur (John Magaro), Hae Sung meets someone else, and another dozen years go by. At long last, and with much anticipation from the tickled audience, Hae Sung finally makes it out to New York and reunites with Nora. The pair never embrace past what is platonically acceptable, but the longing (or is it something else?) is palpable, and we spend the remainder of the film getting to the bottom of it. If it sounds too thin a concept for a feature length film, that’s because the wonder, heart and gut punches that Past Lives packs lie in the beautifully realised interactions between its characters in their everyday lives.

BENEATH THE LAYERS

Produced and distributed (in part) by A24 and premiering at Sundance this year, it’s clear that the faith in this film’s success was high from the get-go. And for good reason; Song had a single-minded idea about piercing alternate dimensions that sprang from being sandwiched between her New Yorker husband and Korean childhood sweetheart on a bar stool as a middleman and translator.

“I was sitting there between these two men who I know love me in different ways, in two different languages and two different cultures. And I’m the only reason why these two men are even talking to each other,” Song recalls. “There's something almost sci-fi about it. You feel like somebody who can transcend culture and time and space and language.” 

A Schrödinger's romantic drama, Song’s film is concerned with the impact that the people we love have on shaping our lives, and the limbo of what gets left behind in the lives not chosen. It’s a strong, simple concept handled with great confidence by the perfect person to do so, and part of the emotional wallop comes from knowing that Song is inviting us into a pivotal moment of her growth as an adult while reconciling with very big feelings.

A DONUT AND A DONUT HOLE

The film is made up of layers and layers of interpersonal connection and explores identity from a unique perspective. Like Everything Everywhere All At Once (another A24 success story), Past Lives contains insights into the migrant experience, beautifully articulated by Lee in her switching between fully fledged New Yorker and half-remembered Korean as she sees her past and present merge over Hae Sung’s one week stay. As Arthur notes, Nora sleep talks in Korean, and while she thinks she left her past behind, there’s still a fragment buried in her subconscious that lives. Interestingly, where EEAAO uses the Everything Bagel as a signifier of its ideas, Song cites a different baked circle.

“It's like you're a donut,” she says. “You're already formed with a little hole inside of you. My husband, when he fell in love, he fell in love with the donut. And it's not like I think about being a donut as a sad thing. It just makes me who I am, that's my shape. And my partner, anybody's partner who is loving somebody, has to love that person as that shape. And then, imagine the donut hole flying twelve hours to come visit.” 

CIRCLES OVER TRIANGLES

Past Lives could easily have been a depiction of a love triangle - and in more removed hands, perhaps it would’ve - but it’s so far from the trope that the audience just sees each character as a lived in person with whom to empathise. The real beauty of the film lies in its antidrama. There are no grand gestures, no big spats stemming from jealousy and no corny declarations; just adult people wrestling with hard feelings as best they can without hurting each other, and coming out the other side better for it. Nora is supported through this reflective moment in her life by two really good men tied together by layers and layers of In-yun, which makes the pain hurtier but the healing much, much easier.

Every player in Past Lives is wonderful and imbues the story with a richness that complements Shabier Kirchner’s 35mm film cinematography. Greta Lee, previously known to us as Homeless Heidi from High Maintenance, is outstanding as Nora, a woman who’s been looking forward for so long that it hurts to turn her neck and face the past. There’s a subtle childishness and whimsy to Nora that surely factors in both men’s attraction to her, and Song’s careful separation of her leading men during the shoot helped facilitate this powerful onscreen dynamic. John Magaro is inspiring as Arthur, a refreshingly non-villainous husband who doesn’t hold Nora back but simply holds her. And Teo Yoo is a romantic hero for the ages whose quiet strength and determination for soul searching will break your heart.

A SPOT OF IN-YUN

I count myself incredibly lucky to have met my person - by chance or the petiteness of Perth - in the DVD aisle of our shared formative retail job. We performed very little actual customer service during our stints as ‘media advisors’ and even had to be rostered on separate shifts to ensure that any work got done, but it was film that brought us together and film that still consumes our downtime a decade later. As the credits rolled on Past Lives we said nothing, but placed our heads together in synchronicity and wiped away the evidence of a good, wholesome cry. It’s not often that you get to experience a truly moving piece of work that speaks to you in the company of the one you love, but that’s what we got in our Saturday morning screening, and no extortionate parking fine from the City of Vincent can take that away from us.

Verdict:

Laura ☆☆☆☆☆

Alex   ☆☆☆☆

Past Lives is in cinemas now. Bring a soulmate.