“If you leave something behind, you gain something too.”
Past Lives follows the connection between Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two children who befriend each other in South Korea but lose contact with each other once Na Young moves emigrates to Canada with her family. 12 years later, the two reconnect through Facebook as young adults as Hae Sung sought to find his long lost friend Na Young, now known as Nora in the English speaking Western World. The two fall in love, but Nora breaks it off as she is becoming too attached to her long distance love interest at the expense of her pursuit of a writing career. 12 years after their digital reunion, Hae Sung finally travels to New York to meet the now married Nora in person after 24 years of physical separation. The two of them then must confront their history and what feelings they may still have for each other.
To call Past Lives a romance film or love story is to call Raging Bull a movie about boxing. Past Lives delves more deeply into the essential human emotion and covers its entire spectrum; the jubilation, the excitement, the doubt, the hurt, the pain, everything one experiences on the journey of deeply caring for another person. The main love story at its heart between Nora and Hae Sung, hits all the heart-tugging sweetness one hopes to see in a good romance film. The chemistry between Lee and Yoo is palpable and immensely relatable, from their origins as childhood sweethearts who play together at school to young adults who have reconnected with their playground crush and found that the innocent chemistry as kids remains in adulthood and could potentially develop into something greater. Watching Hae Sung and Nora reconnect and fall in love once more then inevitably lose it all once more as life and distant conspire against them provides for an empathetic viewing experience that uses a fictional story to connect to the audience’s real experiences and draw them into what’s shown onscreen. Lee and Yoo deftly portray the emotional gamut that their characters go through, feeling more like a documentation of the experience of real people rather than movie characters. You feel what Nora and Hae Sung feel because you’ve been there and thus, you root for them to experience the same happy ending you did or avoid the sad fate that you experienced.
What sets Past Lives apart as a romance film however is the depth at which it depicts love and this is best displayed through the inclusion of Nora’s husband Arthur (John Magaro) as he provides emotional support for his wife while she reconnects with her childhood sweetheart. Through Arthur’s range of emotions during this ordeal, we are shown a side of a love affair that is oft overlooked and rarely explored, that of a third party on the outside looking in. The range of emotions that Arthur experiences and displays onscreen, from the natural feeling of jealousy that arises in Arthur as this attractive man who shares a cultural connection with Nora that Arthur can never have to his competing urge that Arthur has as a husband to be help his wife through her feelings and support her as best he can are written subtly yet strongly by Song and portrayed compellinglly by Magaro.
The best compliment that I can give to Past Lives is that watching this film will transport viewers emotionally into their own past experiences and loves as they watch it and inspire contemplation and reflection; reflection on what was and what could have been. Watching the nearly three decades long journey of love between Nora and Hae Sung is an emotional rollercoaster that encompasses the joy and pain behind love and what makes it worthwhile even if most of our excursions into romance end in disappointment. Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro all combine to provide an immensely relatable view into all aspects of what it means to love and the strength it takes to do it. Celine Song’s display of her talent as both a director and writer are also on full display, with her gifts behind the camera nearly rivaling that of her pen. For all that has been made of how affecting Past Lives is in terms of its story, the cinematography present in it is also extremely impressive as the film is chock full of impressive scene transitions that are seamlessly edited together alongside bits of visual storytelling, such as the shot of young Hae Sung and Na Young going their separate ways for the last time literally down diverging paths home and what I suspect is a Yoko and John Lennon reference in a scene featuring Nora and Arthur cuddling in bed. Also less talked about but very much worth discussing is the film’s jazzy but melancholy score that beautifully compliments the story onscreen and sets the mood for the film itself. All of these superb elements combine to instantly vault Past Lives into the annals of film’s greatest love stories from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which receives a shout out in the movie) to the Before trilogy to In The Mood For Love. With everything this film has going for it, expect to see and hear more about it come spring of next year during awards season.
Image: A24
