In what can be described as one of the most ingenious first scenes for a film, playwright-turned- director Celine Song begins Past Lives by watching her own film for the first couple of minutes. The three primary characters of the film – Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), Nora (Greta Lee) and Arthur (John Magaro) – are seated at a bar. A couple of voices observing them from across try to guess what their dynamic might be. Are the white man and Asian woman a couple, and the Asian man is the outsider? Or is the white man the third wheel, given how the Asian man and woman are engrossed in their own conversation, leaving him out completely? As we find out over the course of the film – both theories are partially true. The camera slowly closes up on Nora’s face, and we sense her struggle. Seated between two men, she’s also between two men.Nora and Hae Sung were classmates in Seoul in 1998. They used to be inseparable, with Nora even confessing to her mother she will marry him one day because “he’s manly”. And yet, they get separated when Nora’s parents – both artists – immigrate to Canada shortly after. Twelve years pass and they lose touch, only to find each other on Facebook. Song’s film does a splendid job of recreating the giddiness of reconnecting with a friend from another lifetime – Nora has a spring in her step while coming back from class. She hastily tidies herself up before turning on her laptop. The camera lingers on the laptop screen for a couple of seconds as the call connects, and one can almost feel how those two seconds feel like an eternity for Nora.It’s no surprise both Nora and Hae Sung can’t stop blushing after seeing each other. He teases her for her rusty Korean, and she recommends Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (2004) to him. Days turn to weeks, and weeks to months, as the euphoria of having rediscovered each other fades away. The different time zones and the distance begins to take a toll on them, leaving them wondering about when (or if at all) they will meet. Overwhelmed by her feelings for him, given their frequent calls, and how it might distract her from her professional goals, Nora proposes that the two take a ‘break’.In all conventional wisdom, Past Lives is Hae Sung and Nora’s story. They’re the fabled ‘soul-mates’, like in the movies. And yet, in many ways, Song’s film doesn’t actually begin until Arthur enters the picture. Nora goes to an artists’ residency in Montauk, where she meets him for the first time. Another 12 years pass, and we find out she’s been married to Arthur for seven years by now. Hae Sung, who was dating someone he met in China as a part of an exchange programme, has planned a trip to New York. At first, Nora thinks it’s just another ‘vacation’ until she learns that he’s broken up with his girlfriend. And he’s come all this way, only to meet her.When Arthur learns about this, his face understandably changes. One of the most endearing things about Song’s film is how all three of her primary characters never try to be deceptive about how they feel. Showing them grappling between being petty and ‘evolved’, makes them more human. Arthur lies awake in bed after Nora tells him how she likes how ‘masculine’ Hae Sung is. “You’re childhood sweethearts, I can’t compete,” Arthur bemoans to Nora, late at night. Even when Arthur finally meets Hae-Jung, he doesn’t try to mask his insecurity, and somehow manages to also be a gracious host by asking him if he’s hungry, and what he would like to eat.Magaro plays Arthur with so much sensitivity, complexity and truth that it’s hard not to feel for him. Especially, while depicting how he’s become an outsider in his own marriage. But Arthur – being an accomplished writer – also knows he doesn’t want to be a stereotypical insecure husband, “forbidding” his wife from meeting someone she cares about. He sits awkwardly with his whiskey sour, as both Nora and Hae Sung talk about their unresolved feelings spanning decades. Even though he doesn’t understand Korean fully well, he can make out from their tone that they’re having an intimate conversation — he gives them the space, and never once intrudes.Yoo is spectacular in the scene where Hae Sung apologises to Arthur for continuing to talk to Nora in Korean, and thereby excluding him. “It’s okay, you guys had a lot to catch up on,” responds Arthur before going on to add, “really glad you came. It was the right thing to do.” One can almost sense the pain in Magaro’s voice, and yet also believe that he means every word.Song’s film delves into “soul-mates” as a concept, forensically examining if it’s applicable in this day and age. We’re told about something called in Korean folklore as “inyun” – basically each time a person passes by each other and their clothes lightly brush against each other, they’re believed to have a layer of “inyun”. It’s widely believed that soul-mates pass by each other 8,000 times in different lifetimes, to become ‘destined’ to be together.It forces Nora to reckon with the question – did she jump the gun by proposing the break all those years ago? Was she meant to be with Hae Sung? What if it didn’t work out? Did she marry Arthur because it was convenient? They were happy together, but was he her soul-mate? “This is my life, this is where I ended up. This is where I’m supposed to be,” Nora emphatically tells Arthur, trying to convince herself, as much as to convince her unsure husband as well as the audience.Still from Past Lives (2023). Photo: Screengrab from videoSong’s film refuses to part with binary takeaways, instead choosing to embrace the messiness of life. It’s possible for a person to hurt in the same manner for two different people, and still be sincere in their affection towards both. Past Lives is sedate in its treatment, especially in the manner Song frames her characters’ loneliness in hotel rooms, on sidewalks, or even while lying in bed with one’s spouse. Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen’s music never intrudes upon the film.Bookended by bittersweet farewells, Song’s film reminded me of C. Premkumar’s 96 (2018), a film that also explores the “what-could-have-been?” territory among childhood sweethearts. However, just like the Tamil film, even Past Lives reaches a logical, mature conclusion. Song knows that sometimes to preserve the purity of an eternal love story is to leave it incomplete. After all, believers in romance will often tell you, there’s always a next life.
