Nora and Hae Sung are two deeply connected childhood friends who are torn apart when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea to Toronto. It takes over twenty years for them to eventually see each other again.
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Past Lives is a wonderful and delightful journey into the depths of emotions you feel towards another person. Based around the Korean concept of in-yeon where if you meet someone even briefly, it means that you have also met in a past life and lovers are people who have met over and over in their past lives.
In the opening scene of the film we see Hae Sung, Nora and Arthur sitting at a bar while an unseen couple watching them and attempting to guess the relationships they have to each other.
Seoul, twenty four years earlier we witness Na Young and Hae Sung who are classmates and walk home from school together each day. With Na Young crying one day when Hae Sung beats her in a test for the first time ever. When speaking to her mother about the boy, she arranges a date and it is one of the most lovely moments. Her mother wanting to give her good memories before they emigrate from Korea to Toronto. The way they both walk silently for that very last time and cannot really begin to find the words and then just bye then was so utterly devastating and heartbreaking.
Twelve years later we catch up with Na Young now known as Nora, emigrating for a second time this time moving to New York City. Hae Sung has finished his military service and attending school to make something out of his life. Nora had been speaking to her mother and decided to look up her old school friends, when using Facebook to do this she finds Hae Sung who had been looking for her and commented on a post on her father’s page.
This causes the pair to reconnect and using Skype they can see and talk to each other again. This certainly tests Nora who only speaks Korean with her mother at this point, an aspiring writer moving to New York to chase her dream. The time difference and lovely Skype connections did not make it easy for them to speak to each other, but we see them in all different locations and different times making that effort. Although for Nora to travel to Seoul or Hae Sung to travel to New York just wasn’t going to work out for another year or two, due to other commitments they both had, one day Nora decides that they shouldn’t talk for a while and that’s even more heartbreak right there. Seriously I was not looking forward to the third chapter of the film at this point because it was all just so difficult to watch.
Twelve years later and still in New York City, Nora married Arthur a fellow writer she met at the writers retreat, she has become a playwright. Hae Sung makes a big trip to New York and meets up with Nora, he announces that he is on a break from his girlfriend and he is too ordinary for her not earning enough money. Arthur is a little bit concerned that he is just in the way of what could be a truly incredible love story, but Nora reassures him that she is in love with him.
Honestly this is the most beautiful film that I have seen in such a long time and each scene and moment had such a huge impact. Beautifully shot with lingering moments and at times showing that you don’t always need to speak and say something when with someone, the silence really can say it all. A couple of scenes really hit hard when the characters were not actually speaking and feeling the pain.
I think I was hoping for a different ending just because that would have been nice, even though I know that the actual ending is truly perfect and how it should have been. Despite the hurt that fills you up with, making you really judge and wonder about everything in your own life. It is all filled up with what ifs and at times isn’t that all we really have to focus on? I certainly think so and often feel that way. The in-yeon concept is something that I am now totally loving and I guess it could also be seen as similar to the whole alternate universe thing? If something just doesn’t work out with someone you truly believe you love, then maybe in a past life it actually worked. That whole fate and destiny but that can all be influenced by choices that you then make, which might not always be for the better.
A truly stunning debut from Celine Song, as writer and director. I really do applaud everything about her work on this film, outstanding. I couldn’t help but think it was the opposite of When Harry Met Sally whilst also being mashed together with Before Sunrise trilogy.
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