Review 698: Past Lives

  

Who do you think they are to each other? That is the question that opens Past Lives as we follow a Voyeristic gaze at three people, Na Young (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Arthur (John Magaro) sitting across the bar and that faceless voice has no idea how their lives are linked. But as the film progresses, we will learn who they are to each other and how  resulting in a beautifully shot and poigant love story and a magnificent debut for Celine Song.

Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are two deeply connected childhood friends are separated when Na's family emigrates from South Korea. Twelve yeats later, Na Young, now Nora, and Hae Sung are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love and the choices thay make a life.

In keeping with Celine Song's theatre roots, Past Lives is structured like a three act play. The first act follow Nora and Hae Sung as childhood friends in Seoul, South Korea harboring a secret crush on each other until Na Youn's family eventually immigrates to Toronto, Canda where she changes her name to "Nora" and they loose contact. 12 years later, Nora is now budding literacy star in New York while Hae Sung has completed his military service and is now studdying engineering. They meet on Skype and start having conversations about their new lives, but Nora becomes concerned about her growing intimicy with a person who seems to exist on her laptop screen. So she hits the breaks and they fall out of each others lives. Another 12 years past and Hae Sung has gone on a holiday to New York where, for the first time in 20 years, he meets Nora who is now married to an American novelist Arthur (John Magaro) and finally brings up all of those buried feelings. 

The beauty of this film is that it's quiet, it's discrete, it's thoughtful. It's a film about how you are different things: Any person contains a number of different things and that contact with different people in your life brings out different people in you which help to  into its profound themes of lost love and childhood crush. 

The love story of Nora and Hae Sung is not only a fascinating viewing experience  allows for self-reflection 

The cinematography is fabulous, giving the New York setting a dreamy atmosphere that emerses us into Nora and Hae's world. The score by Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen is beautiful, the locations are stunning going from Seoul to

In a brilliant example of writing from Celine Song

Greta Lee & Teo Yoo are fabulous in this film playing Nora and Hae    Nora makes it abundently clear to Arthur and us as an audience that there's no way that she would abandon Arthur and run off with Hae Sung

John Magaro also makes a charasmatic imperssion as Arthur, Nora's current boyfriend. One of the films most refreshing innovations of this film is to provide "Nora" with a boyfriend who isn't mearly the third wheel in a love triangle and an obstacle for Hae Sung to get past. Arthur comes across as nothing more than a genuine and loving partner  "In the story, I would be the evil white American husband standing in the way of desting."

all of this makes Past Lives, a romance for the ages, 5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.