Past Lives - Review: An Intimate Look at Life and Love

 

In the realm of indie films, there is no type more “indie” than the quiet, contemplative movie that is mostly talking, thinking, and warm glows of incandescent lightbulbs and city streetlights. Which is to say that everything about writer/director Celine Song’s (“The Wheel of Time”) “Past Lives” makes it seem like the ultra-typical indie movie but calling it that would be doing a disservice to the enthralling, emotionally rich, enrapturing romantic drama on display. 

The film follows a chunk of the lives of Nora, played by Greta Lee (“The Morning Show,” “Russian Doll”), and Hae Sung, played by Tee Yoo (“Leto”), as they grow up together in South Korea, before Nora's family moves to Toronto. Years later, the pair reconnect over the internet, and 24 years after their initial meeting as teens, Hae Sung comes to New York City to visit Nora, who now lives there with her husband Arthur, played by John Magaro (“First Cow,” “The Many Saints of Newark”). 

Song’s directorial debut has a warmth and a lightness to it that not only makes its brisk 106-minute runtime feel like nothing at all, but it also makes it a joy to sit in. There’s a sense of voyeurism that’s established with the opening scene that persists throughout the entire film. The underlying idea of looking at and being looked at persists through the main plot, reinforced by numerous shots expertly constructed by cinematographer Shabier Kirchner (“Small Axe,” “Bull”). 

But all of these moments feel incredibly subtle all the while. Nothing feels tricky or flashy, and Song keeps it all extremely intimate and tight. Her actors carry this feeling as well, Lee, Yoo, and Magaro are all exceptional. They enter the sort of canon of film performances where it doesn’t even feel like performing, they just feel like real people. It’s difficult to describe and a wonder to see. 

It’s easy to see a way in which Song could have crafted this as some kind of love triangle film, and while those elements are there, that’s not the film she’s crafted. It’s far more heartbreaking than that and as it continues, you start to see the pieces fall into place. Much like its main trio, it's an extremely complex and emotionally rich tale that refuses to be put into some kind of genre box yet doesn’t betray its small-scale nature either. It’s a hat trick of a film: big emotions and displays, yet without ever seeming like a “movie.” 

“Past Lives” deals with a lot through all of this. It is a kind of romance movie at its core, but at the same time its dealing with the immigrant experience within its romantic elements. Nora’s relationship to Sung and their shared Korean heritage versus her relationship with Arthur which lacks that. It keeps digging further and further into more layered material, but it never becomes overwhelming due to how Song filters it all through Nora, Sung, and Arthur. No one at any point feels as though they’re reciting a mission statement or looking at the camera and delivering a monologue. It feels, again, voyeuristic, like you’re watching it play out from afar, cameras nonexistent. If there was an emotion that “Past Lives” feels like when it concludes, it's a good, deserved, long cry, like a pent-up release of emotions and heartache. 

Celine Song’s “Past Lives” is a gorgeous film on a visual and emotional level. One of the few small-scale dramas that really works nowadays, her actors take the material and run with it, fully enveloping themselves in the world. It's the sort of film you can disappear into, not because it has an expansive universe of impressive lore or production design. But because it feels so achingly, painfully real that you forget you’re watching a film, and you just lose yourself. 4.5/5