Past Lives – a poignant modern love story

Celine Song’s film is achingly affectionate

Lee and Yoo in Past Lives. Photo: Jon Pack

I loved this film, written and directed by Celine Song. It’s a beautiful, bitter-sweet “what-if?” love story, set in Korea and New York, about childhood sweethearts Nora and Hae Sung, who are separated when her family emigrates to the USA, but who are unable to forget each other. The film follows their lives over 24 years, as they search for each other on the internet, pick up their contact and find that they are still ineffably bound to one another – soulmates, like Cathy and Heathcliff. Will they ever get together again?

Played by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, the two leads are so convincing, so real, that you can’t help going on their emotional journey with them – one of unquenchable longing, discovery, joy and sadness. Song lets the actors play their scenes in their own time – I wonder if they were improvised? – giving the film a refreshing honesty and intimacy.  John Magaro as Arthur, the third person in the relationship, is equally strong. Yes, the musical soundtrack sometimes verges on the mawkish but on the whole the direction is stylish and restrained. The camerawork, too, has a distinct nod to Woody Allen and Sofia Coppola’s affectionate, personalised cityscapes.

 Told for the most part chronologically, the simple story is tinged throughout with that unmistakeable, aching sense of nostalgia for our past lives: the place we grew up, the people we were, and the people we might have been. This feeling taps into all of us, which is what makes this love story resonate so strongly. Blub alert! Take a hanky.