“Past Lives” (2023) starts in an East Village bar showing the perspective of an unseen couple, audience surrogates, guessing the relationship between the three onscreen, seated people, an Asian man (Teo Yoo), an Asian woman (Greta Lee), and a white man (John Magaro). The movie consists of three acts that occur in twelve-year intervals and answers that question by flashing back twenty-four years earlier to twelve-year old classmates Nora (Seung Ah Moon) and Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) walking home after school in South Korea. Director and writer Celine Song makes her directorial debut.
Murphy’s law kept getting in the way of seeing “Past Lives.” The first screening got cancelled with only enough notice not to waste the a trip to Boston. I could not make the second screening because of shifting deadlines. Opening weekend became a cluster of priorities which did not include this movie. By the second weekend, I finally made it to the packed theater and my reserved seat. Envious men looked on wishing that they had chosen my seat as I shooed them away to their correct designation. Because I was on guard against this entitlement, it was harder to let go and get lost in the movie. Then so much time passed between seeing the movie and writing the review that I considered going again, but thanks to The Film Stage Show podcast’s hosts allowing me to make a guest appearance and discuss the movie, I can gather my thoughts about Song’s film.
If I do not sound as glowing about “Past Lives” as some, blame me for not being into films that involve romantic relationships. It helped to go into Song’s film knowing that the film is somewhat autobiographical otherwise I would have questioned why Nora’s relationship to two men define her. Song is choosing how to frame this woman’s story, which could be based on her own experience, so I accept and will not judge it. I highly recommend reading Cambridge Day’s senior writer Allyson Johnson’s review because without it, I do not think that I would have been as conscious of Nora choosing herself as opposed to one man over another. My view of ambition looks completely different, and I would not have recognized her version. I was very hung up on the fact that Song shows Hae Sung with friends, but not Nora, especially because Nora references her friends. Nora is a woman on a strict diet of work, and her treat is the guy who best fits her life, but is Hae Sung that man?
Normally I hate the “How We Got Here” opening trope because it spoils the movie and left me anticipating Magaro’s appearance so I know how much of the movie is left. There was still sufficient remaining tension in “Past Lives” that the opener did not hamstring the movie. The film was reminiscent of “Sliding Doors” (1998), but instead of showing the alternate possibilities, Song allowed the viewers to imagine what Nora’s life would be like if she never immigrated from South Korea to Canada then New York. It is another multiverse film without the sci-fi elements. I was interested in the Korean diaspora elements. It is not a story about returning to South Korea, which usually revolves around adoptees like “Return to Seoul” (2022), and it is not solely taken from the perspective of a South Korean person witnessing an Americanized, prosperous person returning like “Burning” (2018). It is an unusual story because Nora leaves and does not return.
The first act of “Past Lives” takes place during Nora and Hae Sung’s childhood in South Korea. These children have no control over their lives. Nora’s mom decides to let Nora have a [play] date with Hae Sung and further kindle their innocent attraction. As a person brought up as fundamentalist, I loved the idea that a mother would encourage her daughter to have romantic relationships, but on the other hand, she knows that they are about to move. Why would you set them up for heartbreak!?! Nora’s parents are artists, and it is a scene that establishes how Song’s film feels French in fanning the flame of a nascent, hopeless romance.
The kids’ walks are a study in contrasting personalities between Nora and Hae Sung. Nora sulks if she does not do well in school, but Hae Sung does when he realizes that Nora is leaving. He overhears Nora telling fellow classmates, but she never tells him. They do not discuss it because they do not have the words to express their complex emotions. [Side note: they do not wear school uniforms, and I wonder if it means that they were not affluent or as good students as the film depicted since I am unfamiliar with what uniforms signify in South Korea.]
Song’s scene composition and direction are consistently strong elements of the film. In their first scene together, they are walking the streets on the same level, but in their last childhood scene, she is ascending the steps while he stays on the horizon. The steep staircases of South Korea may be familiar to viewers from films like “Parasite” (2019) and can be markers of class. While ascension can show how she is rising in class and opportunity by leaving South Korea, which was not always the prosperous nation that it is currently, I interpreted it as a type of death of self as if she was ascending to heaven, which was confirmed in the final sequence of “Past Lives.” When Nora immigrates, Song depicts her alone on a Canadian playground.
The second act starts with Nora in Manhattan heading to a writing class. Other than when she is working, her life is still solitary in a cramped dorm room only socializing with her mom online. Immigrant and writers’ lives are filled with chosen loneliness revolving around work and social connections made in the past when life was not occupied with only work. Nora responds to Hae Sun’s attempts to find her, which leads to an online reunion. Hae Sun loves Nora for her intelligence and ambition, but Nora’s realistic outlook puts the breaks on the relationship going any further so they can live in the real world. Hae Sun’s real life is filled with people and conventional social activities. Nora’s real life revolves around writing.
My favorite theme in “Past Lives” is dreaming, and my favorite shot occurs during a writing retreat as Nora naps. An open window above her head at the top of the frame functions like a thought bubble. Through the window, the audience can see a cab enter the window’s frame, and Arthur (Magaro) emerges. Even though she does not know that he is there, it is almost as if she was dreaming and willed him to appear. There is an emerging TikTok complaint that movies do not feature desire, but Song is an expert at conveying attraction in brief snapshots, and it starts in this act between Nora and Arthur then later Hae Sung and another woman.
The final act is amazing as Nora’s lives come together, and it has a mournful tone for each character. Lee, Yoo and Magaro’s performances are outstanding, but Lee stands out by being smoldering and may come in second as best actor of the year. She flows and occupies space with ease and confidence. Yoo and Magaro have challenging tasks: depicting men who feel inadequate in comparison without seeming insecure and insufferable. Yoo is a very muscular man, but through his physicality, he evokes the young boy from the first act-kind of inward and withdrawn. He makes Hae Sun seem less mature than Nora.
In a shocking twist, I related most to Arthur and loved his dynamic with Nora. He is one of my three favorite cinematic husbands for 2023—“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret?” (2023) and “You Hurt My Feelings” (2023). Magaro has a hard role to play, and Song had a tough job to create a character that could easily veer into cuck, sad sack territory, but is a departure from the conventional jealous, possessive husband or the annoying, needy man.
Arthur is no slouch. He is a published writer. Like Hae Sun, he likes Nora for being ambitious and intelligence. He learns Korean to understand what she is dreaming about—she speaks Korean in her sleep. Nora and Arthur’s exchanges in their apartment is my real ideal for romance. He adores and appreciates her, and she talks to him without pretense like she would talk to herself. Despite their success, they share the tiniest Brooklyn apartment, but they do not drive each other crazy. He is her best friend, and Nora goes to him to confide in and comfort her. Their relationship echoes her parents’ relationship with the common ground of art/work.
By the time that Song returns to the opening scene, Arthur is generous, melancholic, and self-aware enough to be a welcome host to Hae Sun. He feels inadequate because he understands that Hae Sun knows Nora in a way that he never can despite his best efforts. It is very French how Nora can have an open emotional affair, and their marriage remains intact. Arthur processes his emotions internally without demanding that Nora stop her own process to care for him. Magaro does not get many lines, but he projects his complex and conflicting emotions every moment that he is onscreen even in the margins.
Nora’s emotional reaction to the reunion feels less about Hae Soo, who never rose to the level of boyfriend or lover (Robyn Behr accurately called the romance that “never was”), and more about her finally recognizing the loss of a part of herself when she last saw him in person as a child. Manhattan, instead of South Korea, is a gorgeous backdrop for their reunion and underscores how different they are and how much has changed.
“Past Lives” ends on an implied high note. The concept of In-Yun promises that after 8,000 years of connecting, they can marry and be together. Nora and Hae Sun are one life closer.