Delicately drifting between romance and regret, Past Lives centers on Nora and Hae Sung, fast friends (and edging toward more) as middle schoolers in South Korea, until Nora’s family abruptly moves to Canada. The film—written and directed by Celine Song, making her feature debut—then catches up with them 12 years later, as they reunite via video call for the first time since their youth. That long-distance relationship eventually dissipates and they lose contact for another 12 years, reuniting once more when Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), now an engineer, flies to New York City to visit Nora (Greta Lee), knowing full well that she has since married a fellow writer (John Magaro). Song, a playwright, has fashioned an elegant script and displays a lovely feel for the camera, which unhurriedly finds its way to the places it needs to be. Yet Past Lives packs as much of a wallop as it does because of the intense connection of its leads (never mind that they’re physically disconnected in many of their scenes). Lee leans into the mercenary elements of her character, as Nora is driven in a way that has no time for uncertainty in relationships (notice the curtness of her goodbyes to Hae Sung). Yoo makes Hae Sung a painfully pining romantic figure, both in how he looks at Nora and other ways, as when he awkwardly stands in a New York City park waiting for her to arrive, not knowing what to do with his hands, looking like he’s 12 again. Together, they’re fireworks—or, more accurately, fireworks whose fuses have been lit but never fully ignite. “I didn’t know that liking your husband would hurt so much,” Hae Sung tells Nora in the movie’s sad yet wonderful penultimate scene, where they are out for drinks with her husband and all three do their best, despite the romantic and language barriers, to negotiate the situation while causing the least amount of hurt. I’d compare Past Lives to another impossible-scenario romance like Casablanca, except that Nora and Hae Sung are in some ways more tragic. Unlike Rick and Ilsa, these two never even had Paris, just fleeting moments of what could have been.
(6/14/2023)
