Past Lives

Director: Celine Song (USA. South Korea). Year of Release: 2023

An upmarket bar which could be anywhere. Three people are chatting with each other, but when we hear voices, it’s from people off camera, speculating about their relationship with each other. Two of them – a man and a woman – are Asian looking, one is white. Maybe he’s their tour guide, though that’s unlikely at 4am. As the camera lingers, we see that the two Asians are staring at each other, animated by the conversation. The white man is looking at the woman like a spare part.

A title card appears: “24 years earlier”

We’re in Seoul and a 12-year old boy and girl are walking home from school. She’s been crying, because he’s beaten her in a maths test. She still came second, but she’s still not used to coming second to anyone. Later at home, her mother asks her if she fancies the boy, Hae-Sung. After some deliberation, she says yes, she thinks she does. So her mother consults his mother and they accompany their kids on a sculptore park date. After all, says her mother, she needs the memories.

Mother is about to emigrate the family to Canada. Na-Yeoung and her sister Si-Yeoung are trying out Western names (for most of the film, Na-Yeoung will be known as Nora). When asked in school why she’s leaving, she says its because they won’t award a Nobel Prize to a Korean. As it happens, there’s no obvious reason to go, apart from a feeling of rootlessness by the girls’ parents. On the paths that diverge to their respective homes, Na-Yeoung and Hae-Sung say one last good-bye.

Twelve years pass. Nora becomes a playwright and moves to Manhattan. Hae-Sung does his military service and studies Engineering, but his life lacks direction. Then one day, Nora does exactly what you’re supposed to do on the Internet and looks up what her old friends are doing. To her surprize, she sees that Hae-Sung had beaten her to it, and left a message on her film director father’s facebook page, trying to get in touch. Nora calls him up and organises a skype call.

One skype call leads to another, and the pair start a chaste long-distance online relationship. But Hae-Sung reckons it will take him 18 months to get the permits he needs to visit New York, while Nora has no great desire to return to Seoul – she’d put in too much energy to leave first South Korea, then Canada. So, she suggests that they break off all contact. Hae-Sung reluctantly complies, and for the second time in the film, the pair swap sad farewells.

Nora goes on a writers’ retreat where she meets Arthur, a Jewish writer (the Judaism may not be important to us, but it seems to add to his sense of inadequacy). They know the same films and books, which is as good a reason to marry as any – well that, and Nora’s need for a Green Card. The film is now over halfway through, and we still haven’t reached half of the scenes that we know from the trailer. We have much longer to wait before we return to the opening scene.

Past Lives is a very langourous film that takes its time to reach its destination, and is more about the journey than the arrival. The plot often refers to the pseudo-Buddhist idea of inyeon, the idea that before a couple gets together, they must brush past each other thousands of time in previous lives. It’s mystical bollocks really, but bollocks which help reassure people who feel that they are losing control of their own destiny, ie the main characters in the film.

With this sort of concept behind it, it’s no surprize that this is not a film which is filled with lots of car chases. Nora and Arthur’s marriage is stable but unspectacular. They both get occasionally plagued with self-doubt, but reassure themselves that they’re now adults. Hae-Sung, on the other hand, still lives with his parents and hangs around bars with his male friends. It is as if he has come to New York to finally grow up.

Past Lives is a thoughtful, intelligent film with many interesting asides, such as Arthur’s comment that one of the reasons why he’s learning Korean is to understand the part of Nora which dreams in that language (he knows because she talks in her sleep). It is about the way in which people communicate and fail to communicate with each other, about the special burdens endured in exile, and about the gap between accepted stories and real life. All this is fascinating.

There is a scene towards the end in the bar in which we started. Nora is not there, but Hae-Sung and Arthur are chatting. In their long conversation in Korean, where Arthur was largely excluded, Hae-Sung has already told the love of his life how much it hurts him that he likes her husband. As the last customers leave the bar, we hear John Cale’s maudlin voice singing You Know More than I Know. The quiet song somehow captures the mood that the great love story is fizzling out.

Hae-Sung returns to the flat to pick up his luggage. As Nora accompanies him to his Über, for a third time they are headed to a farewell scene. Will things be different this time? In a sense, we all know the answer to this, and I for one would have been annoyed if the film aimed at an ending which was more fitted to a soap opera than the sober realism which it has maintained until now. But, plot spoilers and all that, you’ll have to see the film yourself to know for sure what happens.

Ultimately, I admired Past Lives rather than absolutely loving it. I couldn’t help but be bowled over by its craft, but the story remained insubstantial. There were few surprizes here, even if that’s not the worst crime against cinema. At least it does not earnestly take itself too seriously. When asked whether she really believes in Inyeon, on which much of the film centres, Nora says “that’s just something Korean people say to seduce someone.”

Korean-born playwright turned director Celine Song, I see you. And I’m looking at you with quite a bit of respect.