I saw the trailer for Celine Song’s film and was spellbound. As soon as it was released, I bought a ticket. But I would be sitting too close to the screen. So, I went to Elsternwick instead. And it still is showing somewhere in Melbourne.
The story is simple. Two childhood sweethearts reuniting (Nora (Na Young) and Hae Sung) played by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo respectively.
But first they must be separated. Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea to Canada. She eventually moves to the USA. And starts a career as a playwright not unlike Celine Song the movie’s director and writer.
Hae Sung only finds out too late. And that’s where we leave it. Until some twelve years later, where like many of us, they try to get in touch with each other.
Which leaves us witness to the slow joy of Skypeing between countries including frozen screens, missed calls and flaky audio. And despite that they build a friendship or is it something more. Unfortunately, circumstances intervene including military service (Hae Sung) and romance (Nora) and they are separated.
But something implicit remains. Perhaps there was something there after all. Past Lives implies the ties between the two rather than explicitly stating anything. It uses the power of silence and the quite subtle body language of its protagonists to tell its story.
And that is brought to light through the expression In-Jun which is about finding your soulmate (after many thousands of near misses aka past lives).
All is left until Hae Sun decides to visit New York. His friends quiz him on the purpose of his visit. This visit creates some consternation for Nora’s partner Arthur (played by John Magaro): he implicitly fears the childhood sweethearts may be recreating what they had. Yet he knows In-Jun applies to them. Despite her sleep-speaking in Korean!
Yet she’s both Korean and American and something else again.
And this is where the movie shies away from cliché.
Because Hae Sung realises this too. That Nora is happy and fulfilled in a foreign country despite still being his childhood sweetheart. So, he loves her and lets her go. And she loves him knowing she can only let him go. And the lover loves her and realises via faith despite his doubts that she is the culmination of their past lives.
The pace is slow and focussed on character over plot using flashbacks between urban New York and Korea: the director doesn’t resort to Korean or New York landmarks (except the Brooklyn bridge) to make the distinction: quite stunningly we know which city is which!
All three actors are stretched but don’t break or fail and communicate much by their inclusion and exclusion of each other, the language barriers as well as the silences and body language: all brought together in the last scene.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Lives_(film)
This movie affected me deeply because I’ve had the ones that should have worked out: the ones I’ve met who knew me and I knew them with so little being said surely meant we must’ve met before. Yet despite the In-Jun principle being applied things didn’t work out. So this is for you and you know who you are.
