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| Writer/director Celine Song |
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| Teo Too, Greta Lee, and John Magaro |
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| Celine Song on the set with Greta Lee |
PAST LIVES B USA South Korea (105 mi) 2023 d: Celine Song
I feel so not Korean when I’m with him but also, in some way, more Korean—so weird. —Nora Moon (Greta Lee)
Celine Song is a South Korean-Canadian director, playwright, and screenwriter whose parents are both artists, moving to Canada at the age of 12, currently based in the United States, having received her degree in playwriting at Columbia University, falling in love with the experimental theater of New York in the 1980’s. Her play Endlings received its world premiere in 2019 at the American Repertory Theater, having its New York premiere in 2020 at the New York Theatre Workshop, but closed early due to the Covid pandemic, while her first feature-film premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival to near universal acclaim. Drawing from her own experience of reuniting with a childhood friend after spending decades apart, the film is ostensibly a study of self-divided identity, a contemplation on love, fate, and the choices we make, following two deeply-connected childhood friends, Nora and Hae-sung, who are each other’s childhood sweethearts who lose touch with one another after Nora’s family abruptly emigrates to Canada from South Korea, where their lives take distinctly different trajectories. Two decades later, following a series of social media connections that also grows strangely silent, they are inexplicably reunited in New York for one fateful week, where watching Wallace Shawn in Louis Malle’s MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981) seems to have been a prerequisite for making this film. The opening of the film is right out of David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), taking place in a darkened bar where unseen voices are heard commenting on the imagined connections between an Asian woman and two men, one Asian and one white, trying to figure out their relation to one another, expressing a snide condescension toward an Asian-American woman in a potential relationship with a white man, with Song deliberately toying with the audience’s expectations. In much the same way, this film offers a similar exploration, ultimately becoming a love story between the girl and each of the two men, as the film effortlessly captures the yearning, heartache, and tenderness through a self-reflective, romantic drama ruminating on the dreams and possibilities of what could have been, quietly exploring how people are tied together, including those we leave behind in order to embark on something new, clearly announcing its intentions when we hear the melancholic anguish of Leonard Cohen’s Leonard Cohen - Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Audio) YouTube (2:58). While some have compared this to the yearning romanticism of Wong Kar-wai or Richard Linklater’s haunting truthfulness, that’s a bit of a stretch, feeling more like hyperbole, as this might have more in common with Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari (2020), another semi-autobiographical take on the director’s own upbringing, or perhaps even John Crowley’s immigrant tale of exile, Brooklyn (2015), with Song envisioning a smaller film that achieves a heavily romanticized intimacy with little to no physical contact, where in the words of the director ('Past Lives' Director Celine Song on How She Made ...), “It’s a movie about ordinary people doing something that is extraordinary but mundane.” Shot on 35mm by Shabier Kirchner, actually written in 2018, this feels more like an overly calculating first feature, bookended by two departures, with smaller moments and very specific observations, posing philosophical what-if questions that feel workshopped, existing in a netherworld where characters wander in and out of what might have been, where it never really comes to life, feeling more like an escape from reality, or an existential quandary consumed by self-doubt, which is then transferred to the audience. One supposes that nearly all immigrants are left with a looming question about the person they might have become if they’d never left their home countries. The film begins with Na-young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae-sung (Yim Seung-min) as children, best friends in every respect, overly competitive in school, where their first date is supervised by their mothers, playfully taking place in a sculpture garden, where Na-young’s mother reveals, “If you leave something behind, you gain something too.” Living nearby from one another, they always part ways where she ascends up a hill, reminiscent of that steep staircase in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) (2004), which becomes emblematic of their separation once she emigrates, leaving Hae-sung behind. As an aspiring writer, she is looking forward to new horizons, choosing a new name for the journey, the more English sounding Nora Moon, informing her friend, “No one from Korea wins a Nobel Prize for Literature.” Of course, at that time no Canadian had received one either, rectified by short story writer Alice Munro winning the coveted prize in 2013.
The film jumps ahead twelve years to Nora as a young adult living in New York City, where most of the film takes place. Somewhat out of the blue, Nora (American actress Greta Lee) and Hae-sung (German-South Korean actor Teo Too) connect over Skype calls, with its familiar ringtone and inexplicable freeze-ups, while checking their wall of postings on Facebook, where it’s been over a decade since they’ve had any contact, as initially he couldn’t find her because she’d taken the Western name of Nora. He’s served his mandatory military service and is now a student while she’s embarking on a career as a writer, acknowledging that she only speaks Korean with her mother and Hae-sung, so it’s a part of her that’s underutilized, but everpresent, an intrinsic part of who she is. While many may commonly associate with these nostalgic social media connections, it may come as no surprise that watching people on their phones and their computers is not what anyone would call a good time, and using it as a vehicle to carry the narrative action is hardly cinematic. Though it’s completely understandable, especially considering our overreliance on technology today, many may feel not just a lull, but an emotional void at having to watch this play out onscreen in a movie theater, wondering if this is what it has come to in movies today. While there is an obvious connection between them, it’s also clear they’ve chosen substantially different paths, where he’s seen drinking heavily with friends, downing shots of soju, complaining endlessly about his sorry love life, wanting to learn Mandarin while pursuing a career in mechanical engineering, while she has amusingly shifted her goals to winning a Pulitzer, and later a Tony, as her goals become more provincial. After speaking to one another at all hours of the day and night, always in a tone of quiet reserve, without a trace of confrontation, where politeness and remaining as inconspicuous as possible appears to be a key aspect of Korean culture, Nora makes a surprising choice, abruptly breaking away from the calls, complaining that she’s losing her focus, as the calls have caused her to stop writing. Pursuing her own career comes with a price, as she’s forced to shut down a part of her past in order to facilitate her future, recommending that he watch Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004), a film about erasing past lovers from your memory (which we see him watch). Escaping instead to a writing retreat in Montauk (where the lovers meet after the memory wash in the Gondry film), she’s the first person to arrive, so gets the best choice of rooms, striking up a conversation with Arthur, John Magaro from Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow (2019) and Showing Up (2022), and before that David Chase’s Not Fade Away (2012), appropriately enough the last to arrive, yet his affable and easy-going nature is a counterpoint to her more ambitiously high-strung temperament. As fate would have it, Nora explains to him the concept of In-yun, a fairly commonplace phrase in Korea, which roughly means destiny or fate, supposedly connected to the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, revealing how fate brings two people together based on countless connections throughout their many previous lifetimes, though she jokes that it’s a classic pick-up line. Apparently the connection works, as Nora and Arthur are married and living in the East Village of New York, where he has a successful book release while she’s seen in rehearsals workshopping Song’s actual play, Endlings, a reflection of the interplay between narrative and identity. While the director never shows it onscreen, each of these abrupt exits has a devastating effect on Hae-sung, who obviously spent a great deal of time and energy trying to find her after all these years, but his disappointment is only hinted at through his remorseful drinking sessions, where he is subjected to merciless ridicule from his buddies. It’s a curious choice, as his vulnerable persona is so much more interesting, as there’s a lot to like, showing substantial humility and emotional depth, where the film is just as much about his loneliness and longing for someone, but Song instead focuses her attention on the more self-centered Nora, who has all the advantages, always thinking of herself first, leading a life of American privilege that borders on arrogance, with both men exhibiting far more self-reflection and sympathy, while she’s simply a much less compelling figure, hardened and more impenetrable, even bossy, necessities perhaps in adapting to her New York surroundings.
While the Charlotte Wells film Aftersun (2022) revisits the past searching for missing clues in trying to figure out what went wrong, this film scours memories in search of what could have been, as Nora and Hae-sung promised to visit each other, but never did. Jumping ahead another twelve years, Nora is a successful New York playwright living with Arthur in what appears to be a symbiotic relationship, while Hae-sung can be seen planning a weeklong trip to New York, where his friends needle him about the stormy weather forecast, as he’ll be arriving in a downpour of rain. While Nora has moved on with her life, it’s clear Hae-sung still has an obvious affection for her, clinging to a distant memory, yet there’s something unspoken between them, which this film would have you believe is In-yun, yet neither one is Buddhist or in any way remotely religious, so this discussion is not organic to the characters, feeling more like a writing exercise. Yet what this film does well is showcase how easily one can assimilate into a different culture, learn a different language, even master the art of writing in that language, yet it’s harder still to acknowledge how one actually feels, carefully dissected in a scene anticipating Hae-sung’s arrival to New York, Past Lives Movie Clip - When Is He Leaving? (2023) YouTube (1:32). When the two finally meet on the streets of New York, there are long stretches of awkward silences as they stroll past the Brooklyn Bridge and ride a ferry encircling the Statue of Liberty taking selfies, but as Arthur predicted, he has clearly come to see her. While she recognizes this, her feelings are less clear, immersed in a kind of homesickness, longing for something that may no longer exist, yet it’s connected to a language and culture she left long ago, something she doesn’t share with her husband, yet is the essence of who she is, becoming a study of cultural displacement and transformation, as she feels like a changed person when she speaks Korean, completely different than when she speaks English. Looking backwards and forward at the same time, this is less about the longing for someone you left behind, and more about that part of yourself you left behind with them, discovering there are no easy answers, yet the loneliness is acute, reflected in Hae-sung’s solitary existence stuck in a hotel room during the first few days of his trip. Perhaps the most exasperating sequence takes place at that aforementioned bar in the wee hours of the morning, as Arthur has joined Nora and Hae-sung for a conversation that almost completely excludes him, speaking only in Korean, with the camera never finding him, as if he doesn’t exit. The way this sequence is shot is intentionally alienating and disturbing, as the director is choosing to avoid her American connection and instead focus entirely on this Korean relationship, accentuating what both left behind. Song frames the story where the two men are not pitted against one another, but exist in their own light, with Hae-sung finally acknowledging at one point, “I didn’t think it would hurt so much to like your husband.” Arthur, to his credit, has been completely supportive of this longtime reunion, realizing it will make his wife happy to reconnect with something he can never be a part of, with his magnanimity defining the breadth of what they do have together, a loving bond, where trust is an inevitable aspect of that. Still, the way it’s filmed, without offering any translations to her husband, seems particularly rude and places Nora in a less sympathetic light. Part of what’s so compelling here is that Hae-sung never really gets over that childhood connection, that first love, which seems to have a power of its own. Clearly, at least to the audience, they have so much more in common, and their soulful conversations are much more intense, so many may feel a tug at the heartstrings when he reveals that for him Nora is someone who leaves, but with Arthur, a fellow writer who feels like a safer choice, she is the one who stays. Is this the right decision? The same could be asked at the end of CASABLANCA (1942), or that devastating finale of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (1964). None of the scenes on the streets of New York feature natural sounds, with the audio done in the studio, while also exhibiting no spontaneity whatsoever, as it is all clearly choreographed and staged, so there is a lack of naturalism in the film, yet the indie music by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen from the Brooklyn rock band Grizzly Bear is outstanding, providing needed texture. Despite all the critical acclaim, however, this lacks the emotional urgency of much better films on the subject of migration, culture shock, alienation, and a changing identity, namely Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul) (2022), Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2002), Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile (Ke tu qiu hen) (1990), and most especially Peter Chan’s Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Tian mi mi) (1997), the latter two both starring the incomparable Maggie Cheung.
