‘Past Lives’ Review: Celine Song Reminds Us of the True Power of Cinema in Staggering Debut
I am both too late and too early for the Past Lives party, considering the movie opened in the United States two months ago but will not fly to Europe until later in the fall. But during a recent trip to the US, I finally had the chance to watch Celine Song‘s enchanting filmmaking debut, and there was no way I would pass up on the chance to talk about my favorite movie of 2023 so far.
The story of Past Lives is as simple as they come, which is also why it’s so layered and complex; it is rooted in the humanity of the characters and the exploration of what love means across space and time. At the age of 9 (give or take), Nora (who goes by a different name back in Asia) emigrates from Korea to Toronto and leaves behind Hae Sung, her childhood sweetheart and the boy she once told her mom she’d marry. With a single cut, we meet back with Nora 12 years later, now living in New York City as a playwright (with Greta Lee taking over the character from here on out); but her life will be turned upside down when she realizes that Hae Sung has been trying to reach her — the two become intimate once again through Skype until the distance becomes too unbearable. But hell breaks loose for Nora once again 12 years later, now that she’s married, when Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) travels to New York for a week, leading up to one of the most devastatingly-beautiful third acts in quite some time.
Perhaps the best description for Past Lives is a reimagining of Casablanca by Richard Linklater, but with some feminine touches that are too subtle to be noticeable, yet inextricably linked to the way the story is told. After all, this is based on Celine Song’s own life experience, which is exactly why it feels so personal to the filmmaker but also to anyone watching. More than any other movie in recent memory, this feels like it was made about any of the spectators, precisely because if there is something that is even more universal than the feeling of love is the story of “the one that got away”. The love story that you always imagined you’d have with a certain person but because of whatever reason, it never materialized.
(L-R) Greta Lee as Nora and Teo Yoo as Hae Sung in Celine Song’s Past Lives. Credit: Jon Pack
The story of Past Lives is shaped by the passage of time, the hammer that finalized the transition between the Nora we first meet in Korea and the one we later find in New York City, when the young girl she once was is all but a memory that has been essentially left to her and Hae Sung’s imagination. A distant thought that gains some new form of life every 12 years after they last saw each other and that feeds off the “what could have happened”s to spark that inner child inside Nora. The connection the two share is unlike anything else she’s shared with any other person, something that is both realized in obvious ways, like Hae Sung being the only person she speaks Korean with outside of her mom (which is a direct hallway to her Korean side that never really went away, even if she tried hard), and also through subtext in the dialogue.
Not even with her husband, who she meets between the two times she reconnected with Hae Sung. Arthur (John Magaro) is the perfect representation of what elevates Past Lives to a whole new level, what catapults it to the top of 2023 movies. It’s not that the love story between Nora and Hae Sung doesn’t carry the entire weight of the movie (boy, does it!), but Arthur is a third-wheel character that pretty much any other director that wasn’t as invested in telling this particular story would have opted to portray as a caricature of jealousy and the true antagonist of the film.
But this is not that movie. In Past Lives, much like in real life, the only true enemies are time, which separates the encounters between both main characters as much as it separates Nora from her previous life in Korea, and space — the miles that separate New York and Korea feel like nothingness compared to the space in between the two when they are finally together but not close enough to culminate their time apart with the kiss that never happened. Arthur got in the way, but not in a Shakespearean manner; rather, Celine Song writes the caricature of her own partner to further explore themes of true and lost love. To emphasize Nora’s own internal division between her Korean self and her English-language-self, which in turn brings up so many hesitations of her own that are directly translated from Song’s own life — this is evident by the gentle touches of her writing and her directing, the connection she has to this story radiates through the screen. After all, filmmaking is a way of expressing ourselves, just like any other art form, and it is with movies like this that a writer-director is actually able to explore the true power of cinema — that of sharing our own human experiences in a way that the audience can engage with and relate to.
Greta Lee as Nora in Celine Song’s Past Lives. Courtesy of A24
All of the above, however, would be absolutely for nothing if it weren’t for Greta Lee and Teo Yoo’s near-miraculous performances. Lee is the driving force of the movie for the majority of its runtime and does so with such delicacy and tenderness that is impossible not to relate to her. She goes from giddy high-schooler whose crush finally looked at her through the crowd to being devastated by the “what ifs” that the gods of fate refused to let her have, while also being grateful to her husband for understanding that it is possible to love him while also wonder what would have happened if any of the choices she made or were made for her would have turned out differently.
John Magaro steps up to the task with a layered performance as someone who loves her wife more he hates any feelings he may have towards anyone from her past, but also wonders if she settled with her because it was the easy thing to do or because she truly loves him. The truth is that there is no definitive answer to any of these questions, and Song’s writing leaves it up to the viewer as much as the actors refuse to lean either way with their portrayals; it’s a grey area that Song herself likely hasn’t figured out yet, and possibly decided to make the movie seeking answers to those questions.
(L-R) Greta Lee as Nora and Teo Yoo as Hae Sung in Celine Song’s Past Lives. Credit: Jon Pack
But Teo Yoo doesn’t stay behind either. Even if Greta Lee already carved her name on the Oscar statue the Academy should absolutely give her if they were brave enough to award a performance that is at its best when she speaks in Korean (I acknowledge that I’m saying this without having seen other major Oscar competitors, yet I will be shocked if Natalie Portman on May December or Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall leave Lee out of the race), Yoo stays behind during the second act but raises to the challenge when the two are finally together. Their chemistry is almost visible in every frame they are together, and that is impossible to accomplish if Yoo doesn’t deliver on every level. He turned his decent performance in the second act (not that the script required much more from him) into a nuanced and poignant portrayal of what it means to see someone you love in another person’s arms, yet still feel like if you reached out, there’s a good chance she would give in.
Past Lives is still playing in some theaters in the US, and will soon open in a few Asian and Oceanian markets later this month. It will debut in European markets during the fall.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
