Celine Song’s PAST LIVES is one of those stories you might roll your eyes at when your friends describe it to you. But, if it’s filmed right, it might just make you sob.
This was my experience, anyway.
PAST LIVES peers into the episodic and ever-sweltering romance between childhood best friends Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). They meet as school children in Seoul, but Nora moves to Canada. This tears her apart from Hae Sung, whom she’s begun to “date”. Two decades pass and Nora’s an aspiring playwright in New York when she discovers Hae Sung is looking to reconnect with her. They speak, boundaries fall, sentiments are forged on Skype. Nora understands her long distance romance is diverting her from professional progress, so she cuts him off. This is precisely when she meets an intrigued Arthur (John Magaro). 12 years slip, Nora hurriedly marries Arthur to acquire a green card, and Hae Sung visits New York. What ensues is a conservative exploration of what could have been.
When I first heard about the plot of PAST LIVES, I was quick to brush it off. One of my pet peeves is when people narrativize and romanticize their lives, as though they were in a movie with genre-defining rules or audience-pleasing structures. In my head, if you don’t end up with someone, it wasn’t meant to be. The ending of LA LA LAND was thus not so painful for me, though its predecessor, UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG left a lasting impression. This is because the latter emphasized suffocation under societal pressures, conditions one cannot necessarily control. This is the success of PAST LIVES. Nora’s intellectual parents choose a tantalizing future in Canada—she cannot control this. Hae Sung becomes a good man by studying engineering, living with his parents, and being, overall, a mild mannered and kindly gentleman—he functions (well) under cultural notions. This carves out the canyon: one of them left and one of them deeply stayed behind.
In this case, Hae Sung romanticizes their story. It’s not clear what initially inspires him, but he is the active force in spurring their reconnection. Though he remains respectful and Nora apprehensive, his warmth and familiarity inevitably wrap around her heart. The cinematic approach to their lingering feelings is not subtle. The camera wades and hovers, the characters physically go separate ways, but the direction need not be invisible for the story to be successful. Song’s frank direction expresses the emotions withheld from the characters. It’s nostalgic, romantic, freezing, stoic. She did a wonderful job. She is a wonderful storyteller.
Overall, the film was poignant. I hate to admit that someone romanticizing their life got to me. Hae Sung’s fixation on the happiness he may have missed out on is simply gut wrenching, and this can be attributed to Teo Yoo’s steady performance. Congrats to him!
Congrats to PAST LIVES!
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