Movie Review: Past Lives

Moviemakers are pretty great at making great romances, but usually out of period pieces. Something about the pre-cell phone era puts nice little simple boundary around the movie in order to tell their great love stories. The characters in Past Lives have cell phones, but Celine Song’s incredible screenplay uses contemporary life to enhance the romance to the next level. Past Lives is one of the first movies to dare to be romantic today; it incorporates the modern world into a full fledged modern romance for the ages.

The movie is built around Moon Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) at 3 distinct ages. At 12, Moon has been growing up with her best friend Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) and maybe starting to have feelings for him. But bad timing, as Moon is about to immigrate to the United States from South Korea. At 24 Moon, now going by Nora (Greta Lee), sees that Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) has been posting on social media trying to find her. A little buzzed, she reaches out, and the two reconnect remotely. And at 36, we see what happens to both Nora and Hae Sung, as well as Arthur (John Magaro), Nora’s fellow playwright who’s fallen in love with her between 24 and 36.

Acts 1 and 2 (you can tell Song is a very organized writer) are the stage setters in Song’s story. Initially it’s all pretty benign: a harmless 12 year old date here, some Skype convos there. But what get’s revealed there slowly creeps up on you. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are incredible despite only sharing screentime, conveying 20-30% of the big stuff through words (remember In-Yun, basically a Korean concept of providence and fate) and 70% through body language and just incredible acting across the board. It’s an aching romance: the connection is clearly there, but circumstances have forced that connection to only happen through a computer screen. While everyone is riveted and agonizing over Nora and Hae Sung’s connection, writer/director Song is planting those seeds for the themes she’s going to explore as that virtual connection becomes a real one 12 years later.

And that third act is where those seeds bear fruit. And not just any fruit: some of the ripest, sweetest, sourest, complicated but delicious fruit you will ever taste, movie wise. John Magaro’s entry snaps the movie into place. Now the concept of In-Yun morphs to include a third person, and whose fates are intertwined with others, which are happy, and which are sad? As Nora goes sightseeing with Hae Sung, and Arthur nervously waits for her return as he plays video games, we see how Nora is this complete, ever evolving person, and the two men have fallen in love with her. The thing is, what Hae Sung loves about Nora is not the same as what Arthur loves about her. But with In-Yun, does that even matter? Song builds the movie using the gorgeous ephemeral New York City backdrop to its epic romantic conclusion, which ripples with tension and finds probably the correct final ending, a near impossible feat only a great writer like Celine Song could conjure from the amazing depths of her talent and her incredible cast.

Smartly, the movie opens with a random voiceover (eg the audience) wondering how these 3 people are related to one another? Past Lives is a great reminder that within something so simple can contain multitudes. And in those multitudes exist an ocean of incredible experiences and feelings, good and bad. I hope this means people get more creative when talking about the “group” across the bar. “What’s their story?” “Well, are you familiar with the concept of In-Yun?”