‘Past Lives’ Review: Celine Song’s Romance Is One For The Ages
Greta Lee (left) & Teo Yoo in Past Lives. Courtesy of A24.
He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious? They were childhood sweethearts. She moved away. Decades later, she’s married, and he comes to visit. She’s happy with her life, married to Arthur, the “evil, white, American husband standing in the way of destiny,” as the film puts it. We begin towards the end of their story, watching the three sit at a bar as we hear a voiceover by two others in the restaurant debating the relationship between the three. Co-workers? Relatives? And then: 24 Years Earlier. This is the first time jump in Celine Song’s Past Lives, a plot device that she uses to push the story forward while not giving us every part of their story. We see the important things: their first date as kids before she immigrates. 12 Years Later, they reconnect, but then she meets him. They share a picture-perfect first kiss; another moment left mostly to our imaginations. And then, Present Day.
Greta Lee (left), John Magaro, & Teo Yoo in Past Lives. Courtesy of A24.
When we pick up with Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo)’s story, Past Lives has a clearer sense of what it’s setting out to accomplish and why. The first half hour tackles the hard part: setting up the alley-oop of backstories and motivations, allowing the rest of the runtime can grab the ball for the slam dunk. What writer/director Celine Song (basing the film on her own story) does so beautifully here is the way she approaches the usage of time in the film, showing how the mere passage of time can affect two individuals in extremely different ways and how the connections we form may never disappear. In the case of Nora and Hae Sung, this comes in the fact that, though they haven’t seen each other since elementary school — and haven’t communicated in more than a decade — there’s a clear, lingering, “What if?” between them, serving as the driving force behind the film’s latter sequences that, while filled to the brim with pent-up feeling and emotion feels restrained, knowing that no matter which direction it goes at each fork in the road, someone is always thinking about what would happen if it went the other way.
Though the first act is mostly set up, it introduces what we need to know about these characters in a manner that makes them feel familiar, almost as if we’d experienced their story before, whether on film or in our own lives. The hard part about this is the fact that we know where this story leads, how, no matter what, someone will get hurt, and that there are no perfect endings. This is what puts pressure on Past Lives’ script — the fact that we’ve seen every possible ending before, yet the film stills needs to stand on its own, which it manages to do in an emotionally devastating manner that feels true to its characters.
Teo Yoo (left) & Greta Lee in Past Lives. Courtesy of A24.
There’s a point in the third act when we come back to where we began, with three people sitting at a bar, having a conversation. This moment is one of two that are crucial to the film — and its ending — because it makes clear through framing and dialogue — plus outstanding delivery from John Magaro, who you can’t help but feel sad for — that this is in no way a love triangle. It’s the story of a woman who’s being pulled by two parts of her life, forced to pick one, both, neither, or simply grow and pave her own path. Song, overseeing her directorial debut, delicately commands the film’s tone, ensuring that we know that the movie is a drama, carefully staying away from a shift during moments that, when looked at under a different light, could easily find themselves placed in a rom-com — not verbatim, of course.
Past Lives’ third act, which on its own is a masterclass in careful storytelling, culminates in a beautiful, emotionally devastating ending that, through two final shots, brings us back to reality, out of the fantasy, knowing that, regardless of how these people continue their lives, there will always be a small corner of their head that wonders, “What if?” ∎ This Week Media
Past Lives arrives in limited theaters on June 2 before playing everywhere on June 23.
This review was made possible thanks to A24 who invited us to an advance screening of Past Lives for review.
