Celine Song’s masterful and controlled debut feature, Past Lives, explores the complex relationship of child sweethearts to long distance adulthood and the proverbial “what if”.
It’s no question that the buzziest film out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Celine Song’s extraordinary feature debut, Past Lives. Only available viewing in-person at Sundance due to having its international premiere in competition at the 73rd Berlinale, Past Lives was the talk of the festival that swooned audiences about this story of love and sorrow. Inspired by Song’s own personal experiences, she constructs this story of three people, one female, and two males told through three decades. From South Korea to Toronto to New York, cultures, gender roles, and the idea of our one life collide in this contemplative journey of one’s purpose and path in life, reminiscing on lost loves, and the proverbial “what ifs”.
In one of the best opening scenes of recent American cinema, we meet the three while an outside couple observes them across the bar, conversing on what the three’s relationship are. Whether who’s the boyfriend of the girl, or if one is the brother of the girl, while the American is the boyfriend. With such an innocent, yet mysterious prologue, the title card appears and we are transported to 24 years earlier, in Seoul, South Korea.
Twelve year old Nora and Hae Sung, two of the classes top students, competitive in academics, yet deeply close as children go, even so much that their parents agree to go on a playdate before they know of their separation. Once notified that Nora will be emigrating to Toronto abruptly, the two’s distant farewells leave a sour taste, but as such, life goes on.
From Toronto, and twelve years later, somewhere between 2004 and 2005, begins the second act of temporal resonance. Nora (Greta Lee) is on her ways to New York to begin her artist residency as part of her playwriting career, while Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) decides to knock on an old friend’s door via Facebook messaging her father’s Facebook. Luckily this gesture opens up a suggestive inquiry in Nora’s mind, leading to messaging back, starting up various Skype chats between the two, rekindling the long lost friendship of innocence to now, two adults bordering on the edge of romance, but only distance in the way. The two decide to stop communicating due to the painstaking distance, again, but this time, as adults.
Nora goes off to a retreat as part of her residency where she meets and capriciously begins a romance with Arthur (John Magaro). A discussion about In-Yun, a Korean concept about fate and missed connections, brought the two together, beginning a new chapter of Nora’s life. Twelve years later, the two are married and Nora receives notice Hae Sung will be visiting New York. As the film has been laying the groundwork to come to the meeting of three, as seen in the opening, a whirlwind of mature love is thrown at all three, leaving an emotional third act, bearing all vulnerability from a powerhouse emotional performance by Greta Lee.
With three great performances allowing emotional range that captures a non-traditional relationship of love, the three balance each other out that could have gone in a performative and raunchy path, but Song’s brilliant script allows each to understand each person’s motives and emotions. Song’s use of time and space also allows her script to succeed in organically earning the tense and poignant payoffs, whether it be prolonging Skype silences or long takes of walks besides the New York skyline. This original story of love and non-regrets demonstrates a new talented voice in Asian-American cinema.
