This review contains spoilers.
Celine Song’s Past Lives begins on an ingenious note. A threesome sit at a bar. Two are Korean—a man and a woman. The third is a bearded white guy.
We hear a voiceover of a couple playing “Guess the relationship dynamic” from across the bar.
The white guy and the Korean girl are a couple, one suggests. The other Korean guy is her brother.
But look at how much attention she’s paying to the Korean guy, the other observes, going on to speculate that the two Koreans are married tourists and the white guy is their tour guide.
Then the woman, her name is Nora (Greta Lee), breaks the fourth wall and stares directly at the camera. Her expression vaguely suggests, “FML.”
And from there, we work our way back to that scene.
It’s 24 years earlier. Twelve-year-old Nora (Moon Seung-ah), still using her Korean name, Na Young, is squabbling with a boy, Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min). He finally got a better grade than her and she’s in tears. You always get better grades than me, he teases—and the one time I beat you, you cry? There’s a familiarity and affection coursing between the two classmates. But at that point, Nora knows something that Hae Sung doesn’t: She’s going to be moving to Toronto with her family.
Later, their mothers arrange a “date” between them, in a playground. Unbothered by the watchful eyes of their moms, who have tagged along, the children romp and play in a kind of besotted bubble. Afterward, Hae Sung sulkily says goodbye.
Flash forward 12 years—“or 12 years passes,” in the film’s parlance—and Nora is now living in New York City, working as a playwright. (Hey, if Celine Song can do it, why not Nora?) Over the phone, her mother mentions Hae Sung. Nora hadn’t thought of him in years! She hops onto Facebook and discovers he’s been trying to track her down. (The name change made it difficult.) They reconnect over Skype (kudos to the film for getting all the 2012 details right). She finds out that he’s completed his mandatory Korean military service and is getting an engineering degree. They start talking more often, getting closer. It’s clear the feelings are still there. But Hae Sung (now played by the handsome Teo Yoo) won’t be able to come visit her in New York for at least another eighteen months so Nora cuts off their rekindled friendship. She wants to be fully invested in her American life, she explains. She can’t have one foot back in Korea. Hae Sung is clearly crushed but once again tries to remain stoic.
Nora attends a writers’ retreat in Montauk, where she meets novelist Arthur (John Magaro). They seem to have an instant rapport. She tells him about the Korean concept of in-yeon—this idea that fate brings people together over the course of several lifetimes.
“Has in-yeon brought us together?” he asks.
She laughs. “No, it’s just something Koreans say to seduce someone.”
Twelve years pass. Arthur and Nora are married—happily so, although it was accelerated by her need for a Green Card. Hae Sung is finally coming to New York City for a visit. “Is he coming to see you?” Arthur asks. Nora lies and says she’s not sure.
She and Hae Sung meet and stare at each other, a bit too long, then laugh and hug. She takes him on a tour of New York. They take a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. The chemistry is still there.
That night, at home, she admits to Arthur that Hae Sung came to New York to see her. Arthur asks if he’s attractive. He is, she admits. But he’s very Korean. Very much a part of the world she intentionally left behind.
Arthur expresses some of his insecurities: He always wondered if their marriage was one of convenience, of good timing: two writers at the same retreat, who lived in the same city, who had a similar taste in books and movies. She doesn’t reassure him so much as say, this is the life she chose. Life with Hae Sung would be a different one.
Arthur is such a menschy guy, he agrees to go out to dinner with Nora and Hae Sung. They have pasta—Hae Sung’s request—and Arthur shows off his Korean (bad, but not as bad as Hae Sung’s English). They move to the bar and suddenly we’re at the opening scene.
Now, remember what the couple observed? That Nora was paying more attention to Hae Sung than Arthur? It plays out in a nearly unbearable way.
Nora and Hae Sung speak to each other in Korean. They’re back in that bubble again, where it’s just the two of them, even in a crowded room. Except HER HUSBAND IS RIGHT THERE! Ahem. Sorry, I was a bit triggered by this scene. I understand that Nora is going through something difficult, contemplating a different life, a different lover, a road not taken—but her treatment of Arthur seems unnecessarily cruel. Not intentionally so. She’s just selfishly careless with his heart.
It’s hard to care about Nora after she treats Arthur this way (ironically, Hae Sung apologizes to him, but Nora doesn’t), despite Greta Lee’s wonderfully subtle and affecting performance. I don’t mind having a protagonist who can be carelessly cruel, as long as the filmmaker sees her that way. I think Celine Song wants us to be so invested in Nora’s dilemma, her interior life, her impossible choice, that we don’t care how horrible she’s being to her husband. Or maybe Song thinks that all will (and should) be forgiven if Nora stays with Arthur. You’ll have to watch the film to see if that’s what she does.
Past Lives is lovely—smart, deeply felt, carefully observed, pleasingly patient with its characters and their emotions. And it also gives you lots to chew on about past lives, potential lives, and the power of choice over fate. Even its use of “12 years pass” has a meaningful ring to it—life passes, sometimes quickly, sometimes without us taking proper stock of it.
But I couldn’t quite get the lingering bad taste out of my mouth after Nora’s emotional betrayal. Arthur, call me.