• Past Lives

9/23/24 (Mon)

Canadian writer/director Celine Song’s debut work is a romantic flick about two Korean childhood friends who are forced to separate at age 12 due to their parents’ jobs. The quiet boy remains in Seoul, while the more vivacious woman emigrates to Canada and then to the US to become a writer. After a 12-year blank, they reconnect thanks to the wonders of Facebook. They begin to chat regularly online, obviously still smitten with each other. The chats become a distraction for the woman, however, perhaps tying her to a past that she no longer recognizes. She impulsively asks him not to contact her anymore.

It is only another dozen years later, marking another turn in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese calendar, that they finally meet in person again when he comes to see her in New York. By this time, he has been dumped by his girlfriend and she is married to a Jewish novelist. They reunite in joy, or what passes for joy in the man’s introverted personality, but soon realize that their chance has gone. Seeing the woman in her new life, the man humbly sacrifices whatever hope he might have held and tells her he is leaving. In a moving ending, they wonder, in the context of a Korean concept known as inyeon, if this life is a past life that they are simply recalling in the future. They might previously have been strangers on a train or a bird and a branch, and who knows how they might meet next time. As he returns to Korea, he tells her that he looks forward to seeing her then, as they separate forever.

The man’s reticence makes it hard to see why she likes him, especially compared to the artsy and talkative New Yorker that she married. But I suppose the strong-but-silent type is always in vogue. The film is really her story since the man only pops up between their meetings, whether real or virtual. We follow her life, but he acts mainly as a trigger to the past.

Teo Yao as the male conveys great emotion in his silence, a tribute to the nicely underplayed acting. I had assumed that there would be fireworks when he returned, but the emotions were kept smartly under control in line with his personality, a much more powerful approach. Greta Lee is perfect as the woman who, though happy in her present life, deals also with a life that might have been. I wonder if her relationships with the two men are reflected in the language itself. She was apparently told to speak or continue to speak Korean in the film in a childish way to reflect the long time spent abroad, though the husband notes that she speaks Korean in her sleep. Certainly her life took a very different trajectory when she married the American writer as opposed to the less conventionally “intellectual” Korean, and Lee beautifully expresses the complicated feelings in revisiting both her past and her imagined past. John Magaro, who I knew from the Woody Allen television series, is not overly exciting as the husband. There’s not much contrast between his character before and after his wife’s reunion, which felt flat.

Even so, the film is a delicate and reflective piece that goes for truth rather than manufactured emotion. This seems the work of a much more experienced writer. Song is most certainly a talent to watch.