Celine Song's Past Lives (2023): Contemplative melancholia in this life, anyway

light spoilers ahead!

As the LA road closures for the Golden Globes indicate, we have officially entered awards season! Critics in general have agreed that 2023 was a good year for movies. Did it sufficiently revive a struggling medium? Have people begun returning to the theaters in earnest? Here’s hoping. Perhaps the industry will thrive if Hollywood continues to offer fresh, intelligently crafted films like Past Lives. 

Celine Song's directional debut, Past Lives, explores the romantically unfilled relationship between Nora and Hae Sung, whose friendship in their youth in Korea looms large in their minds over the years, following Nora’s move to Canada with her family. As such, the film explores the concept of timing in relationships. Does a brief, significant encounter in one’s life mean that, in a former or future life, your relationship had experienced or will experience something more profound? More sensual than romantic, the film also depicts the ways in which technology allows us to consider unfulfilled possibilities through the growing interconnectedness of the world. Enter into the chat: Facebook and Skype to reconnect the two as adults.

While the combined sharpness of language and the detailed mise-en-scène create a rich world, the dialogue’s sparseness sometimes means that Nora’s inner world remains opaque to the viewer. Maybe that’s the point; maybe we’re not meant to know Nora. Or, perhaps, another actor could have conveyed the subtleties of the character’s inner life with more precision. Despite my appreciation for the attention to language, I found myself more drawn to Song’s direction than to her script. She constructs each shot with the attention and love of an artist composing a painting with a harmony of palate. 

In terms of acting, Teo Yoo’s sensitive yearning as Hae Sung outranks that of his castmates. But the true star of the film is the Korean concept of 인연, inyeon. Buddhist in origin, the concept refers to "providence or fate,”  Nora explains in a voiceover, “specifically about relationships between people.” The Internet confirms that inyeon could also be translated as “reincarnation” or “past lives,” indicating that it is the true title of the film. 

Whereas critics tend to focus on the love triangle to frame their analysis of the film, I don’t believe that the triangle actually exists, which the film itself makes explicit after its interesting opening scene later fully depicted in the film. Nora’s husband Arthur is inoffensively schlubby in both outfit and, frankly, personality. The film is so wholly uninterested in the husband that it's almost comical. In one scene where he airs his discomfort about the other man,  Arthur defines his relationship with his wife in terms of common interests, rather than any sort of passion, signifying his own lack of imagination in their relationship. But he is her husband, for better or for worse.

Billed as semi-autobiographical, one wonders the extent to which it hews to the director's own life. Some might say that it doesn’t matter. But I would love a nonfiction account in the form of an essay of such an experience for more intimate insights.

I'm excited for what Song makes next. Past Lives is the sort of film that gives you new eyes to appreciate the sensory world in your own reality. Hollywood: more films like this, please! 

NB: I’ve seen critics refer to it as an “indie” film; how “indie” is A24 nowadays?