By James Murphy
While Celine Song’s directorial debut references Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and is similarly achingly beautiful, this is not a Hollywood love story. With its cinematic exploration of the Korean word in-yeon, which roughly translates to “you can’t control who comes into your life and who stays in it”, Past Lives makes tangible universal agonies: unrequited loves, the torments of what might have been, the tragedy of meeting someone at the wrong place or the wrong time.
Past Lives, fittingly, exists, mostly, in two worlds. It begins with the worlds colliding, as Nora (Greta Lee), her husband Arthur (John Magaro) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) sit in a bar at 3 AM. It then flashes back 24 years to Korea, where Nora/Na Young and Hae Sung have a primary school crush which is abruptly ended by Nora’s immigration to Canada. Leaping 12 years forward, the two re-connect across borders over Facebook and video chat, forming a digital friendship that verges on romance, but that is cut short again by the tyranny of distance. Finally, in the present, Nora has been married for seven years (seven-year itch), Hae Sung is contemplating marriage, but travels to New York to finally reunite with Nora to see if the bond still exists.
Past Lives revels in awkward silences, in moments where nothing can be said, no words will suffice. No words, except for in-yeon. Like Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, Celine Song tries to make sense of the complexities of coupling: the silly utterings between the sheets, the unspoken fears that the one you love, the person who expands your reality, could be dreaming of someone else. It’s also a timely examination of how deeply we can bond over the internet, as well as pondering whether childhood loves, or fairy tale stories, hold greater sway than attachments formed by circumstance. Comparative merits of American and Korean socio-economic conditions, and the immigrant experience are also strong undercurrents.
Cognitive scientists debate the extent to which our conceptions of reality are shaped by the languages that we speak: if there are no words for a feeling or a perception, can we feel or see it? Maybe we feel something ineffable, that we grasp for but can’t quite grab hold onto. Past Lives helps us grab hold of that feeling. It is consciousness expanding and heart breaking.
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