Celine Song’s debut feature, which didn’t win any Oscars despite being the most acclaimed indie movie of 2023 in the U.S., may be the purest cinematic distillation of the Korean emigrant experience, even more so than Minari. Centered on a woman whose family moved from Seoul to Canada when she was twelve, the film explores the sense of connection with the past that fades over time only to be pulled back into emotional purview when a figure from that past returns. Nora (Greta Lee), a playwright living in New York with her white novelist husband, stumbles upon her first girlhood crush from Seoul, Hae-Sung (Teo Yoo), as he seeks her out online, and they embark on a long-distance Skype relationship that eventually becomes overwhelming, at least for Nora. Years later, Hae-sung comes to visit her after breaking up with his girlfriend, and the encounter is as fraught as an overloaded container ship. I’ve seen the movie twice, the first time in South Korea with a Korean audience, which was educational. “There but for the grace of God,” everyone seemed to be moaning during the quiet, devastating climax.

The second time I concentrated more on the plotting and was perplexed by the details of the various interactions, which felt calculated without being complete. Nora’s parents are both artists, and their move to Toronto for professional reasons was never explained satisfactorily. (In interviews, Song admits that the story is based very much on her own history.) Consequently, Nora’s success as a writer, while hardly phenomenal, seems preordained, and when she meets her future husband, Arthur (John Magaro), at a writers’ workshop, it all comes down to chemistry. Song understands how such a marriage might appear to others, and makes it the point of the opening scene, which depicts Nora, Arthur, and Hae-sung in a bar together near the end of the story. Since Arthur doesn’t understand Korean and Hae-sung’s English is barely passable, Nora can control the separate conversations but is basically frank about her feelings when talking to either man. This is where Past Lives comes into its own as a study of intimate interaction. Though much has been made of the philosophical dimension of Nora’s approach to Hae-sung’s attentions, her marriage appears to fulfill her practical needs, something she doesn’t take for granted. Romantic love, in fact, isn’t a primary motivator, which may confuse viewers expecting a conventional melodrama; it’s more of a struggle between the unavoidable pull of nostalgia (or “inyun,” a very specific Buddhist term that describes how past lives affects one’s present one) and the more natural push of connubial comfort. What I wished Song had interrogated more closely was Nora’s and Arthur’s relationship as fellow writers, since they seem to be at least partly in competition with each other. (Arthur, upon hearing the background of his wife’s relationship to Hae-sung, remarks that it’s a “great story,” as if he wished he could write it himself.) As it stands, Nora skillfully keeps the two vectors running in parallel, so they never truly intersect, even in that very moving last scene.

Song keeps the tone melancholy and autumnal (even if it seems to take place in early summer), making Past Lives one of the best New York movies of recent memory: These conversations, these feelings could never have been generated in any other place. In comparison, the early scenes in Seoul feel tentative, as if the crew weren’t sure they were even allowed to film here. There’s a lot to appreciate, but I suspect there’s more to the story than meets the eye and ear.

In English and Korean. Opens April 5 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Bunkamura Le Cinema Shibuya Miyashita (050-6875-5280), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Past Lives home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Twenty Years Rights LLC