Blissed-out Potential — Past Lives review

A version of this appeared in The Scotsman.

The recent trend in blockbuster cinema for movies set in multiverses is all very well, but the ability to explore every road not travelled doesn’t half diminish the pang of regret that’s been an abiding principle of every unrequited love story from Casablanca and Brief Encounter to In the Mood for Love and Before Sunset. In Celine Song’s exquisite debut Past Lives, the what-if question that fuels these types of stories is once again left hanging. This is a film intent on giving us plenty of pang for our buck. 

Set over a whopping 24 years, it revolves around Nora (Greta Lee), a New York-based playwright whose intermittent encounters with her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) have complicated both their lives in imperceptible yet far-reaching ways. 

We first get to know them as kids in Seoul, where Hae Sung knew Nora by her Korean name, Na Young. Their friendly teasing masks feelings that their 12-year-old selves don’t yet know how to process, but on their first and only chaperoned date, Hae Sung learns Na Young’s family are emigrating to Canada and, just like that, first love is thwarted before it’s had a chance to blossom.

If kids are supposed to be resilient and get over things, though, no one tells Hae Sung. 12 years later he tracks Nora down online and, though she hasn’t thought about him in years, she’s intrigued enough to reconnect on Facebook, the ultimate 21st century tool for exploring and fantasising about emotional roads not travelled. 

Here, Song and her actors do a remarkable job of creating romantic tension as this tentative relationship plays out across different time zones via glitchy Skype calls and text messages at all hours. This is a film that understands the dopamine rush of digital connection, but also the way it can be used to prolong the blissed-out potential of a relationship by repeatedly deferring a real-world encounter. When neither can commit to visiting the other, Nora, perhaps sensing Hae Sung’s addiction to his own yearning, tells him she “wants to stop talking for a while” and, boom, another 12 years pass. 

What follows as the inevitable meet-up occurs (we know from the enigmatic opening scene it’s going to happen) is a bittersweet exploration of how life complicates not just matters of the heart, but matters of identity. Nora’s now happily married to a fellow writer (wonderfully played by John Magaro) who’s learning Korean and knows all about her connection with Hae Sung, even joking about what his role would be if their lives were fodder for a traditional romantic drama. 

But the hurt masked by such joking around is also one of the numerous small ways Song’s generosity as a storyteller manifests itself as she explores how Hae Sung’s arrival in New York on a business trip opens up complicated feelings in Nora about her homeland, her marriage and her own place in the world. When Hae Sung and Nora first meet in person, it’s like they’re seeing the ghosts of their childhood selves and Song stages the reunion so they both come across as kid-like. They’re awkward and small within the frame, and as Nora guides Hae Sung around New York, the sense of what might have been had she not left South Korea when she did is palpable. The ache throbs like a phantom limb; the pang evident in everything they don’t say to each other. This could be the ending of a beautiful friendship.