Celine Song’s film debut, Past Lives, pulls off a trick that few can do: it manages to illustrate the power of memory, the way it wains over time before fully arresting us when we least expect it. Greta Lee plays Nora Moon, a married New York playwright. Nora was born in South Korea – her original name is Na Young – and immigrated with her family when she was still a child. Nora has assimilated quite well, fitting in perfectly within the American creative community, attending artist residencies and climbing the ladder of New York’s competitive dramatic industry. And yet, something pulls her back; or, more specifically, someone. Past Lives lives in a space free of time, as Nora is confronted with feelings she thought she had overcome, only to learn she’s not much different than the child she used to be.
In Korea, the young Na Young (played then by Seung Ah Moon) is close friends with Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim), a fellow student who rivals Na Young’s excellent grades and provides a shoulder to cry on. Na Young is a sensitive child, a bedwetter and a frequent crier. Even as a child, Hae Sung is tuned in to his friend’s emotional needs. When Na Young’s parents, two successful artists, decide to move to Canada, her mother encourages her to go on a date with Hae Sung, to provide a lasting memory before leaving for another continent. The connection between Na Young and Hae Sung is obvious to both parents, and Na Young’s eventual move comes with an abrupt finality, to their life in Korea and their blooming young romance. Na Young becomes Nora and doesn’t speak to Hae Sung for twelve years.
So the stakes are set up early in Past Lives, with Na Young and Hae Sung connected by fate but ruined by chance. Living in Seoul, and going through his mandatory military service, Hae Sung (now played beautifully as an adult by Teo Yoo) can think only of his fervent love, unable to connect with anyone else. When the two reconnect after twelve years, they find their bond sparked by frequent Skype calls, but Nora eventually ends it when she realizes that their relationship could never flourish on opposite ends of the world. After another twelve years, Nora has married a fellow writer, Arthur (John Magaro), further ensconcing herself within the bohemian world of Greenwich Village. When Hae Sung decides to finally make a trip to visit her in Manhattan, Nora finds herself torn between her current life and her past one, and which one more truly provides a path to her happiness.
Celine Song’s film may remind some of Richard Linklater’s Before films, chronicling the romance between two people over decades while also chronicling how that passed time can effect our loves and our priorities. For me, I was reminded of the stories of Alice Munro, the Canadian writer whose mastery of time narrative is unmatched. Like Munro, Song understands that people may recover over time, but that same time can become truncated when triggered by the right memory. Nora’s transition – from Korea to New York, from Hae Sung to Arthur – is both a hard and fast fact, and a fragile reality that can be dismantled by the slightest push. Over Skype and Facebook messages, Nora’s feelings for Hae Sung was always a theoretical reimagining of her childhood recollection. Seeing him physically and in person for the first time in twenty-four years brings on an overwhelming wave of emotion that she never could have foreseen.
On its surface, Past Lives appears to be a film about a doomed love, but Song is not as sentimental or maudlin as that description might sound. Hae Sung not only represents a dramatic and romantic what-if, but a connection to a home and culture left behind. The sense of guilt for Nora, as if she abandoned Hae Sung, extends further to South Korea, an entire community that she is both explicitly linked and also no longer fully understands. With Hae Sung back in her life, Nora is transported back to grade school in Seoul, and her connection with her childhood friend re-establishes her own complicated feelings about her own Korean-ness. This becomes particularly problematic for Arthur, a generous and welcoming husband, who understandably feels powerless against everything that Hae Sung represents.
Teo Yoo’s Hae Sung is a steady, effective performance of persistence, of holding a torch over decades against the odds. It’s Hae Sung who refuses to give up on Nora, who continues to pursue a connection, albeit in muted and modest ways. As Arthur, the husband caught in between them, John Magaro’s melancholy performance is a highlight of the film’s second half. Wanting to give Nora proper space to spend time with her friend, he must perpetually thread the needle between understanding their relationship and establishing his place in Nora’s life. The way Past Lives poses this passive rivalry is an incredible feat from Song, who understands the inherent drama of two men being in love with the same woman, but refuses to send it anywhere you would expect. Magaro and Yoo both share great chemistry with Lee, but their few scenes together produce a potent tension, despite the characters’ own empathy for each other.
Greta Lee, a striking actress who has thrived in smaller roles throughout film and television over the last decade, gets her first opportunity to lead a film here. Lee’s presence has often been steely and sardonic, and while Past Lives plays upon that persona, Song is smart enough to show the vulnerability underneath it, allowing Lee to paint a fuller portrait of a woman torn between the life she’s in and the life she fled. Lee doesn’t hide from Nora’s professional ambition or her desperation to forget the Korea she left behind. As much as Nora tries to escape, Hae Sung’s presence stifles it. That Nora both wants the nostalgic passion of Hae Sung and to keep the comfortable practicality of Arthur is a difficult duality for an actor to project, but Lee does so brilliantly, playing a heartbreak that is so much more complex than your average love story.
Celine Song’s pensive approach leans into the movie’s themes of time’s flexibility. Nora and Hae Sung’s lives seem to move forward with a fierce ferocity when they’re apart, only to become completely still when they’re together. The slow burn development of the story might loll some audiences into indifference with its frequent stillness, but those who stick with it will be rewarded by the film’s conclusion, which will strike you down if you’re not prepared for it. That stillness throughout the film, we learn, is actually filled with unspoken yearning, and those decades of silence spill over into an ending that bursts with uncaged emotions. Pulsing with regret, Past Lives will bowl you over with its transparent passion, while also satisfying its own dramatic entanglements. There is no escaping the past, Celine Song is telling us, but that doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing.
Written and Directed by Celine Song