"Past Lives": review

Teo Yoo as Hae-sung; Greta Lee as Nora (pronounce "Teo" like the French "Théo")

2023's "Past Lives" is a gently quiet romance-drama directed by first-timer Celine Song, who also wrote the story. It stars Greta Lee, Teo Yoo (actually Yoo Tae-oh/유태오—a stage name; his real name is 김치훈/Kim Chi-hoon), and John Magaro. It is initially the story of young Na-young and her guy friend Hae-sung (Moon Seung-ah and Yim Seung-min, respectively, as the youths), schoolmates who like each other and hang out until, one day, Na-young's parents make the important decision to emigrate to Canada, leaving Na-young and Hae-sung to part sadly. As the story moves forward in time, an adult Na-young (Lee), now called Nora, lives and works in New York as a playwright. Nora discovers that her old friend Hae-sung (Yoo) has been searching for her online; he's been unable to find her because of Nora's changed name, but Nora contacts Hae-sung. They embark on a series of Skype conversations, which Nora breaks away from; twelve years pass. During this period of separation, playwright Nora meets novelist Arthur (Magaro) at a writers' retreat; they fall in love and marry, but Hae-sung still lurks in Nora's background. The movie's focus thus changes to the possible rekindling of friendship between Nora and Hae-sung, leaving Arthur—now Nora's husband—to deal with his own insecurity as Nora and Hae-sung contrive to meet together in person. Metaphysically, there are several things going on at once. The Korean concept of in-yeon (which Nora translates as "providence or fate"*) comes into play, as does the concept's relationship to past lives, but there is also plenty of counterfactual talk—the would-haves, could-haves, and should-haves of lives that have radically branched apart. So along with reincarnation, there is also the slight tinge of a multiverse narrative operating just behind the scenes.

Nora is obviously deeply affected by the reappearance of Hae-sung who, after studying abroad in China as part of his engineering degree, eventually comes to New York to see Nora. The two haven't seen each other in person for around three decades. It's natural for the audience to wonder whether we're moving into love-triangle territory; the specter of Nora's possibly becoming unfaithful is ever-present, hovering in the background in a way that is both sinister and hopeful. But the present-moment "will they, won't they" question is not the most fundamental one. The question is there, of course; the script is smart enough to address the issue by showing us Arthur's simultaneous tension around Hae-sung (they do meet) as well as his unexpected fondness for the Korean. Arthur and Hae-sung are two good men trapped in awkward circumstances. And Arthur even has a moment lying quietly in bed with Nora, in which he half-jokingly says that, if this were a story, he'd be the evil white husband standing in the way of destiny, keeping Nora back from seeing Hae-sung. Of course, Arthur is a good man who, despite his insecurities, is secure enough not to resent Nora for wanting to see Hae-sung. I'll leave the movie's ending unspoiled, but as you might guess, with so few main characters, there can be only a small number of ways for the story to resolve itself. The only hint I'll give is that the movie is Asian enough, in its sensibilities, to follow through to an Asian conclusion. 

Overall, I liked "Past Lives," but it's not without its problems. Actress Greta Lee, as the adult Nora, looks ravishingly beautiful from some angles—with her short, almost bobbed hairdo—and weirdly awkward in others. Nora speaks Korean with a plausibly gyopo accent, and Teo Yoo's Hae-sung jokes with her about how her Korean has deteriorated (how fluent Greta Lee is in Korean, I don't know, but she sounded pretty fluent to me). I also thought the movie engaged in a bit of stereotyping with Arthur, whose character is Jewish, and who is portrayed as neurotically insecure, reminding me of Woody Allen's nebbishy schtick in every one of his movies. (Arthur nevertheless has virtues to recommend him: he loves his wife and cares for her; he has a strong career as a writer of note, which gives him a measure of confidence that offsets the insecurity. He's obviously a good man, and he can see how much it means to Nora for her to get back together with Hae-sung for while.) The movie's slow pacing might also be a problem for people looking for a faster-paced story. I don't think I minded the pacing too much, but it did lack a certain energy.

Then again, as we turn to the movie's many virtues, that lack of energy came as a relief. This is a movie directed by a Korean-Canadian, Celine Song, who is a first-time helmer. Song, who moved to Canada when she was 12 (and for whom the character of Nora is something of a self-insert), seems to have internalized Western culture pretty deeply. She gets the scenes in Korea right, but she also holds back from the native-Korean tendency, when making films and TV shows, to be emotionally diarrhetic, with all the stereotypical, nonstop screaming and crying and arguing—from both men and women. "Past Lives" keeps a steadily quiet tone for its entire length, despite there being several moments where the tension heightens. Intercultural awkwardness between Arthur and Hae-sung isn't played for low comedy but is instead tastefully dealt with. When Hae-sung struggles to make himself understood to Arthur in broken English, and when Arthur tries fumblingly to show off the few Korean sentences he can say, the whole thing feels real and plausible, not cartoonish and parodic. The movie's greatest appeal may come from the way it deals with the philosophical x and y axes of in-yeon, on the one hand, and alternative timelines/universes (the counterfactual would-haves, could-haves, etc.) on the other. A bit like the quietly meditative movie "Paterson," this movie presents us with deep ideas in a way that doesn't come off as preachy or academic.

Greta Lee and Teo Yoo both give soulful performances as two childhood friends who have moved apart and cannot quite come back together because too much time has flowed between them. John Magaro handles his fifth-wheel role with feeling; despite the character's awkwardness and insecurity, Arthur still comes off as real and sincere, and his concerns, when Hae-sung reappears, are less for himself than they are for his marriage to Nora. The film's cinematography is urban-beautiful without being overwhelming; enough is going on to give us a firm sense of place: Seoul and New York City are clearly contrasted, with Nora and Hae-sung's Skype conservations highlighting the thirteen- or fourteen-hour contrast as two people on opposite sides of the planet talk with each other. The movie's soundtrack has a light-jazz feel to it, appropriate to, and contributing to, the movie's overall mood.

In one sense, though, the movie is a long version of one of the few episodes of the TV sitcom "Dharma and Greg" that I ever watched. In that episode, husband Greg has to step away for a bit, and wife Dharma finds herself in a bar. While there, she meets a guy who is absolutely Dharma-like: the same hippie sensibilities, similar notions of Americanized Hinduism in their yoga practice—everything clicks on every level, and Dharma ultimately realizes she has found her soul-mate. But—and I thought this was rather touching–the episode ends with Greg picking Dharma up, and she remarks that she found her soul-mate, but she's "going home with the man I love." Nora mentions something very similar to Arthur during that in-bed moment: Arthur expresses his worries about how Hae-sung is someone Nora can immediately relate to, how she and Hae-sung have ties going back to childhood, how Arthur can't compete with that, etc., and Nora says to Arthur, "You're forgetting the part where I love you."

Go watch "Past Lives" when you're in a nicely quiet, contemplative mood. It's not going to get the heart racing like an action movie; it's not going to be loaded with fever-pitch tension and casual racism like a Tarantino film, but it'll give you much to think about, and I think it will stay with you long after the ending credits are over.

__________

*I had originally thought in-yeon came from the characters 人連, person-connection, but when I looked the phrase up, I saw it was actually 因緣, or roughly, cause-destiny, with the cause part referring, possibly, to Buddhist notions of cause and effect (karma, i.e., the law of action, or the law of cause and effect). This is why, at one point in the movie, Nora speculates that in-yeon is a term coming from (Korean) Buddhism and accompanying notions of reincarnation (technically, Buddhists believe in rebirth, not reincarnation). As Nora explains it, in-yeon can be seen in people who merely brush against each other, the weight of their past lives causing a sort of gravitational attraction. "If two people get married, they say it's because there have been 8,000 layers of in-yeon, over 8,000 lifetimes."