MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY FILM INQUIRER

“What a good story this is. Childhood sweethearts who reconnect 20 years later and realise they were meant for each other.” So says Arthur, the husband of main character Nora, about her and her visiting childhood friend Hae Sung in Celine Song’s feature debut Past Lives. Sadly, however, the compelling concept behind this story never reaches its full potential in the film itself.

It well behooves us to discuss Past Lives now that the Oscars season is over, as it is arguably the most important American film of this past year. Important in that the film was made by and mainly starred the Asian diaspora community; one of only a few such movies to have received a nomination in the Academy Award for Best Picture category and, at the same time, which has gained popular success with audiences worldwide. Despite all that, one still needs to look at the movie holistically when critiquing it.

First, it’s important to recognise the courage of Ms. Song, the film’s writer and director, who, for her debut, chooses a personal story. Importantly, she tells it in a manner rarely seen in American cinema these days, where fast-paced camera movements and even more hurried storylines purport to keep audiences at edge for the entire duration of movies. None of that happens in Ms. Song’s movie. Indeed, the no-nonsense approach of the director, and the cinematographer, Shabier Kirchner, in recounting the story is vivid and impactful in many moments. That includes the playful movement of the camera the first time Nora and Hae Sung meet in America, as well as the initial, humorous portrayal of Hae Sung, Nora and Arthur in the pub. Most outstanding, however, is the bed scene. It is long and, naturally, there is not significant lighting. Yet the dialogue is so well delivered that my attention was fully captured. Incidentally, it is heart-warming to see that, at a time where gratuitous sexuality is rampant in Hollywood, the filmmaker creates a serious and truly intimate scene as part of her movie.

However, there are several problems with the movie for me which primarily stem from the script itself.

For its relatively short 105-minute length, Past Lives surprisingly feels so tedious at times. The film is often slow where it should not be and stunningly fast-paced otherwise. The childhood scenes of the two main characters are too short and we are shown little to understand why there is such a big connection between them until the movie cuts into a new time point “12 years” later. For comparison with a similar concept of reconnection between childhood friends, I need to refer to the Iranian film What’s the Time in Your World?, whose treatment of this connection is very well done through the introduction of flash-back scenes of its characters’ childhoods, as well as the depiction of dreamlike sequences with the male lead later in the movie. Sadly, the film has not been viewed much in the West (though it is easily accessible on YouTube in Persian without English subtitles), but it makes a stronger case for identifying with the male character of the film and his mad love.

In Past Lives though, all we see of the “madness” in the male character’s infatuation is reduced to one desperate episode of him leaving a comment on Nora’s dad’s Facebook page. Worse, we do not even observe how “pissed off” (as he mentions later) he becomes after their sudden break-up, until we are shown briefly an episode of his heavy drinking with friends prior to a subsequent trip to China. He is largely passive in his love. This might be partly due to the fact this is how the story may have been in real life, but the importance of making a movie from a personal experience should not be about retelling the facts. Rather, it should be to make them more appealing and identifiable for the audience.

Nora is also not without flaws as a character. Except for the bringing up of her obsession with winning flashy literary/theatre awards, attending a writers retreat where we see no writing beyond Nora marking her American name on a bedroom wall alongside others’, and a glance of a No Fear Shakespeare book on her desk (a book high school students use to help with their homework) there is not much else shown of her passion and fascination with playwriting and theatre. I understand; the movie is not about her professional life, it’s about her love life. But if an important part of the story is about her having had to sacrifice her past life in Korea because of her writing aspirations, then I would have liked to see what is so captivating about her professional life that justifies that sacrifice.

In the end, the movie never culminates because of these very reasons. The two childhood friends meet up but they do not spend much time together other than visiting some touristy displays of New York City. The final pub scene is touching and loving – and very well cinematographed – but in the context of the whole film it could not satisfy me. Similarly, the film ends on a poignant note, with Greta Lee’s performance as Nora moving, but I was never convinced why this love story unfolded the way it did; why do Nora and Hae Sung seem to break off their friendship so completely at the film’s end? [Highlight black bar to reveal spoiler] Some may call that the art of the filmmaker to invoke such a question but, in this case, I respectfully beg to differ.

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Past Lives can be seen in cinemas now, or at home on Video on Demand, DVD and Blu-ray.