Review of the film Celine Song “Past Lives”

Celine Song’s directorial debut, Past Lives, which was nominated for two Oscars, was released. A love story that never happened turns here into a reflection on the destinies that we choose and that choose us. Tells Julia Shagelman.

The film begins with a game: invisible bar patrons try to guess the identity of the three people at the other end of the bar. An Asian man and woman and another white man—maybe a brother and sister and her boyfriend? Or a married couple and their friend who seems like a third wheel next to them? Or tourists and their American guide, or just colleagues who stopped by for a drink after work?

The audience is then drawn into the game, but we have an advantage over the disembodied voiceovers: the director rewinds time and shows us where the story began that led the three heroes to this New York bar. And it was twenty-four years ago and on the other side of the world, in South Korea, when the parents of twelve-year-old Na En (Moon Sun Ah) decided to emigrate to Canada. The girl is captivated by the opening prospects, she has already come up with a new name for herself – Nora, in honor of the heroine of the Leonard Cohen song, and dreams of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Only classmate Hae Sun (Lim Seung Min), who is touchingly childishly in love with her, is sad. Before leaving, the mothers decide to arrange their first real date with Na En so that they both have pleasant memories.

Twelve years pass (the on-screen credits use this very word, “passes,” emphasizing the smooth, almost imperceptible, but unstoppable passage of time). Hae Sung (Teo Yu) served in the army and is studying at university, and Nora (Greta Lee) moved again, from Toronto to New York, to become a playwright: now she dreams not of the Nobel, but of the Pulitzer. One day, almost jokingly going through the names of those who remained in Korea, Nora finds Hae Sung on social networks. In long conversations on Skype, perhaps something more than just friendship begins, but Nora decisively puts an end to it: she did not emigrate twice so that now she can stay up at night studying the flight schedule to Seoul.

Finally, a third character enters the scene: this is also an aspiring writer, Arthur (John Magaro). When they meet, Nora tells him about the Korean concept of “inyon” – according to it, people whose souls intersected quite often in past lives will definitely meet and find each other in the current one. Maybe these are just fancy words that Koreans use to seduce someone. But they work: twelve years later, Nora and Arthur are married and happy with each other. However, this is the moment that Hae Sung chooses to finally come to New York to see his elusive girlfriend/love/dream, or whatever he has to do with Nora.

Like many debuts, Celine Son’s film, directed by her own script, is extremely autobiographical. She, like her heroine, was taken from Korea by her parents at the age of twelve, she also writes plays and is also married to an American colleague, and even an old friend came to visit her in New York. I think this is why not only the dialogues, even if they sometimes sound overly literary (but it’s not for nothing that two of the three main characters work professionally with words), but also the looks, touches, and subtle nuances of the characters’ relationships feel so real and lived-in. However, the picture, despite its chamberness and intimacy, goes beyond one private story, just as the conversations of Nora, Arthur and Hae Sung imperceptibly cross the border of the personal, touching on broader topics.

The non-existent love triangle (Arthur, of course, is nervous when an attractive Korean appears, but almost immediately it becomes clear that his and Nora’s marriage is not in danger) The dream is used as a hook to catch the audience’s attention. The real theme of the film is the eternal human regret of not being able to rewind life and see what might have happened if one path rather than one had been chosen. With each move, Nora feels more confident, as if settling into her own personality, and New York, work, and her relationship with her husband become a natural extension of her. Hae Sung, who is firmly rooted in Korean life, finds it difficult to tear himself away from it even for a week of vacation, and no story about the connection of souls will change the fact that Nora never had a place in this life. However, there is always hope for one of the following.