PAST LIVES

"He was just this kid in my head for such a long time. And then, he was just this image on my laptop. And now, he is a physical person. It's really intense, but I don't think that that's attraction. I think I just missed him a lot. I think I missed Seoul." - Nora

Who you were and who you are, two sides of a perpetually airborne coin in a linear timeline of self reflection. Celine Song’s debut film Past Lives spans decades of separation leading to what-ifs infused with what could be. A delicate notion of past influences that wreak havoc on our future psyche. Song waves the proverbial white flag in her admission that dwelling in history can contaminate our happiness in the present. Laid out in simple layers of constraint, the film divulges this warm tenor in its expression surrounding complex topics like cultural identity, spousal support, and fate.

Past Lives covers the span of 24 years between Na Young and Hae Sung, starting when the two were twelve years old living in Korea. Little insight is given regarding their history. Small tender moments as they walk home together or when Hae Sung comforts Na Young as she cries because she got the second highest scores in the class display a decisive warmth between them. Their mothers watch them play with each other on their first planned date, affection abound in prying, methodical camera movements seemingly invading a secret interaction, an effect used throughout the film. Na Young’s mother mentions they were immigrating to Toronto, shifting to a scene of Na Young and her sister choosing which Americanized name they liked, establishing the thematic dichotomy Na Young will face as she balances her Koreanness. During Nora and Hae Sung’s last walk home together, a lingering “Bye” finalizes a severed connection as the two part ways, Hae Sung resolutely remaining in Korea and Nora accepting her future cultural dualism. Their beginning leaves little consequence cementing who each of them is individually and who they are to each other, a decision Song deliberately enforces. Call it willful ignorance or prepubescent hormones, the insidiousness of their reciprocity remains questioningly afoot.

A move to New York and twelve years later, Nora finds herself listlessly searching at random for her old Korean schoolmates while her mom listens in via phone, asking “who was that guy I had a crush on?” Despite her impartiality to the Hae Sung she once knew, she finds a comment he left on her father’s Facebook page, asking if anyone knew how he could get in contact with her. A few direct messages later, in between loading screens and frustrating wifi connections, the film transitions into skype call after skype call. Soft smiles and fixed glances cocoon these two childhood sweethearts despite the worlds between them. Hae Sung took more than school notes, reminiscing on the Nora he regularly consoled all the time while she cried, a past version of herself Nora acknowledges but no longer identifies with. Her Korean is rusty, admitting she only speaks the language with her mother, furthering her otherness from the man on the screen across from her and the adjustments that had to be made to make it as a successful English writer and westernized citizen. This filler time during the movie could have been utilized to root these characters in a deeper manner, but alas, Hae Sung, and even Nora despite her being the center of the narrative, remain aloof and underdeveloped in their connection to each other and their presence in their own spaces. Ultimately, neither one is able to visit the other in their respective parts of the world, adulthood and fate once again plaguing their inevitable communion.

Living in New York as a playwright and married to Arthur, an American author, Nora mentions that Hae Sung will be visiting New York for the first time, the twos first physical encounter twenty-four years after Nora’s goodbye. An expectedness hangs in the air as they meet, the camera panning back and forth as awkwardness blooms. Voyeuristic camera shots follow them from afar as they discuss their lives, Hae Sung mentioning he and his girlfriend are on a break because of his mediocre income and overall ordinariness. Their conversations leave much to be desired, long lingering stares and avoidant eye-contact in a weird dance of desire that doesn’t quite translate the way Song intended. Hae Sung’s demure, unsure demeanor exudes a youthful naivety next to Nora’s ambivalent conviction. They are different than they used to be, not only in the way they carry themselves but also in the minimal dialogue caught between long pauses and silent rumination. Chemistry aside, considering there was minimal, an emotional yearning for them to reconcile their star-crossed history garners less support and becomes more of a nuisance.

Back in their apartment, Nora and Arthur discuss Nora’s attraction to Hae Sung. She mentions how Korean he still is, even though the audience has no exposure to what that really means other than Nora’s admission to her separation from such a concept. They lay in bed together as Arthur admits his unyielding love for Nora, existentially voicing his uncomfortable position as a white man potentially hindering true-love between two Korean sweet hearts. Was he the man she married because he was the one who showed up at the right time and place? Nora awkwardly pauses numerous times throughout this discussion, a stark difference next to Arthur’s quick, unwavering admiration. Nora’s apparent indecision and subconscious longing for closure becomes eclipsed by her stoicism and slight selfishness. Regardless of her emotional state, these agonizing lapses in conversation on her part accumulate, making it hard not only to navigate where she stands, understandably so, but also filling the film with uncomfortable impassivity.

Hae Sung’s last night yields the most palpable thematic resolution as the three get dinner and sit at a bar. Nora sits in the middle, the personified language barrier as Hae Sung speaks to her in Korean and she translates for Arthur. The camera smoothly pans from one man to the other in slow precision, exemplifying the pendulum of Nora’s identity; on one side, a man who embodies her native culture and knows a part of her Arthur never would, and on the other, a man who displays a marvelous appreciation and love for the person she has become. Subtly flies out the window when unresolved emotions come to the forefront and an intimate Korean conversation transpires, leaving Arthur out of frame, about what could have been if Nora never left Seoul. A fixed, examining look imbeds itself in Hae Sung’s face as he searches for the girl he once knew as a child. But Nora placidly admits she no longer exists, that version of her is long lost to a place she no longer knows, replaced by a culture she had to adapt to and by the man she fell in love with next to her. The tortuous exclusion of Arthur during this interaction, a man who respectfully acknowledges his inability to provide an accurate understanding of Nora’s loss of cultural identity, stains Nora’s character and the film itself. Song’s directorial warmth and invasive camera angles provide a pulsating sadness registering the potential impact of a woman who may still yearn for a life she was unaware she desired.

The Korean concept of in-yeon becomes a seemingly ethereal addition to the soul of the film. Being brought up several times, in-yeon describes the idea that meeting someone, even briefly, means you met in a past life, explaining that lovers are people who have met over and over, eight thousand times even. Nora doesn’t believe in such superstition, stating such a thing is a way for Koreans to seduce each other. Hae Sung ponders to Nora who they possibly were to each other in a past life, or that this currently might be a past life, their time for love predestined for a future timeline. This whimsical abstraction tethers a disconnected narrative to a cultural lifesaver. The general motif of what-ifs and changing identities bank on the films in-yeon inclusion, either supplying a seemingly thin thematic structure or a calibrated subtly connecting the characters to each other. Nora grapples with this dilemma, contemplating if this ancestral concept of fate should guide her love life, or if she should take matters into her own hands and welcome the love she already has. Her painful indecisiveness becomes the ultimate decision and encompasses the entirety of her uncertainty; accept who she is and the culture she now inhabits or embrace the person she once was and the life she could have had.

Past Lives’ gnawing quietness encapsulates a universally silent predicament: what have we lost in the evolution of ourselves, what and who could we have been had we done things differently? A cacophony of different versions of ourselves lives on in the minds of the people we’ve met, an ever-growing amalgamation of past lives that molded, and will continue to mold, who we are and will become. Divisive in execution but ubiquitous thematically, Song debuts a reticently profound message with an emotionally notable punch.