'Past Lives' movie review: A tender, beautiful, profound and poignant ode to unfulfilled love

Past Lives Poster

Film: Past Lives
Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
Director: Celine Song
Rating: 3.5/5
Runtime: 105 mins

Celine Song's poignant directorial debut follows Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two childhood friends who are reunited 20 years after they were separated by Nora's emigration from South Korea. The two old friends reconnect and begin reminiscing about their past bonding as children, and subsequent social media connect as teens, and this brings forth a churning of longing and yearning that only good sense and acceptance of fate can simplify. What might have been? haunts them…as Hae Sung piquantly asks, "If you had never left Seoul, would I have still looked for you? Would we have dated? Broken up? Gotten married? Would we have had kids together?" This retrospective preponderance gains stranglehold of the narrative as Song develops and fine-tunes the understated nuances in the evocation.

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Words matter and the choice of dialogue is the key here. The dialogues acknowledge the random little things in their lives that add up in a certain way to solidify the idea of fate, the Buddhist "in-yun" concept of meeting someone again and again in reincarnation cycles. Complex emotions, choices made and retrospective yearning come into play as the two struggle with staying in the present.

The culture-specific characters are beautifully drawn and don't devolve into cliches - credit must go to the writer as well as the performers who ace their craft. Song's semi-autobiographical scripting and direction is assured and sensitive. Her creative storytelling elicits outstanding performances from her two leads Lee and Yoo, who make Nora and Hae Sung so believable that their chemistry just jumps at you from the screen. The Jewish-American husband as played by John Magaro, who is also central to the byplay, gives ‘understanding' and ‘supportive' a whole new meaning.

The cinematography by Shabier Kirchner, though focused on the characters, manages to serenade you with gorgeous backdrops of Seoul and New York. The film's score adds touching notes to the experience with its evocative soundtrack that makes poignancy and reflection a theme that haunts throughout. Song's film is an unforgettable reflection on love, longing, and culture treated in such a way as to garner maximum emotional impact.