Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Past Lives’ on Paramount+, a Captivatingly Philosophical Love Story from Filmmaker Celine Song

A word of advice: Don’t let Past Lives (now streaming on Paramount+, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) slip by. Celine Song’s directorial debut is a rarity, an intelligently written and acted adult drama spanning a couple dozen years in the lives of childhood friends who reunite after being separated by many years and many, many miles, and featuring a breakout performance by Greta Lee (of Russian Doll and The Morning Show fame). The film boasts Oscar-caliber work in front of and behind the camera – let’s not forget that during the long, slow drag of awards season, OK? – and here’s why.    

PAST LIVES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with a three-shot: Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), Nora (Lee) and Arthur (John Magaro) sitting at a bar. Hae Sung and Nora talk while Arthur sits quietly, disconnected from the conversation. The voices of two characters – unseen, never to be heard again – watch them, making a sort of game out of guessing the social dynamics of the scene. Who’s married? Are any of them siblings? What are they talking about? Hold that thought, because we’ll return to this scene at the end of the movie. Cut to 24 YEARS EARLIER, when Hae Sung and Nora (Seung Min Yim and Seung Ah Moon, respectively) are 12-year-old classmates in Seoul, mutual crushes in the cute, awkward manner of youth, which is to say, they tease each other a little – specifically, about how she cries all the time – and play it a bit blase even though their attraction is blatantly obvious. One thing: Nora isn’t Nora yet. She goes by her Korean name, Na Young, and will change it to Nora Moon when she and her parents and sister immigrate to Toronto. Na Young’s mother arranges a date with Hae Sung, hoping to create a good memory before they depart. The kids enjoy an afternoon climbing on sculptures at a park and then Na Young’s family moves on.

Subtitle: 12 YEARS PASS. Nora lives in New York City; she’s a playwright who’s about to go to Montauk for an artist’s residency. Hae Sung is still in Seoul, studying engineering; we see him out with his friends, all soused and bemoaning their despondent love lives. Nora learns that Hae Sung sought her out on Facebook, but couldn’t find her due to the name change. She reaches out. They video-chat with the glitchy tech of the early 2010s, but their mutual affection cuts through the stuttering audio and video. Their cross-continental conversations become a regular thing for how long exactly? Does it matter? They share themselves as well as they can, and there’s love there, and they seem to recognize it, although whether they say it or not isn’t quite clear. But the pragmatics of their professional lives don’t align. Any chance of one traveling to see the other is at least a year away. Nora says they should stop talking, and both acknowledge the pain of doing it, but do it anyway, and they move on.

Hae Sung goes to China to study, and we see him catch the smiling eyes of a young woman in a restaurant. Nora moves into a house for her residency, and meets Arthur, a fellow writer. Another subtitle: 12 YEARS PASS, again. Nora and Arthur are still together. Married, actually. They’re just returning to New York from Toronto, where they visited her parents. Seoul: We see Hae Sung and his friends in a less-soused state than when we last saw them. They’re older now but Hae Sung is still unlucky in love – he just broke up with his girlfriend. His friends tease him: Why is he going to New York? “Vacation, to rest,” he insists, defensively. But we know why, and so does he, and so do his friends, one of whom points out that the New York forecast is for rain, rain, rain, and they laugh, with the exception of Hae Sung. He looks sad, depressed maybe, lonely possibly, when he gets to the city. Now he’s nervous, waiting to see Nora. Note: He knows she’s married. They meet on the sidewalk and as they lock eyes the movie briefly cuts to their 24-years-younger selves playing in the park. She gives him a big long hug and he looks like he’s on the verge of tears. Wait, wasn’t she the one who was a crybaby?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The biggest reference point is Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, if it was directed like a less romantic Woody Allen or less minimalistic Kelly Reichardt.

Performance Worth Watching: With an arresting, understated performance, Lee (who showcased a different skillset as a comic actress in Russian Doll) establishes herself as a significant talent capable of worldlessly exploring the depths of a character – and she does so with nary a hint of histrionics or a single overheated overture.

Memorable Dialogue: Nora employs a metaphor while describing her marriage to Arthur in a keen example of the layered, but simple verse of Song’s script: “It’s like planting two trees in one pot. Our roots need to find their place.”

Sex and Skin: None, although the implied and imagined sexual intimacy here is off the damn charts.

Our Take: What a debut from Song. What an emergence by Lee. What an introduction (to most of us Westerners, anyway) to Yoo. What a reiteration of Magaro’s skill. Past Lives is a mature, engrossing and subtly metaphysical love story about the what-ifs, what-could-have-beens and what-nows of a friendship. Song holds on those moments so her characters, and by extension her audience, can contemplate a splinter of imagined reality, one in which maybe Nora is still Na Young and never moved from Korea, or one in which Hae Sung was more confident in himself (this is the film’s quietest, most devastating tragedy), or one in which Arthur wasn’t Nora’s circumstantial lover and partner, wasn’t the only other single person at the residency. Nora and Hae Sung ponder whether they knew each other in a previous life, and the multiverse vibrates with unconsummated possibility. 

Shabier Kirchner’s (Small Axe) cinematography is plaintive and evocative, noticing the grit and splendor – and soul – of the deep-urban environments of New York and Seoul; it’s romantic without being romanticized, if you’ll allow me to so finely split that hair. Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur’s surroundings play a key role in, for lack of a better word, their destinies as average people, citydwellers with professional careers and ambitions and dreams and yearnings. Song builds to an emotionally rich, quietly devastating climax that’ll catch in your throat, and linger as you contemplate yourself and who you are and who you were and who you might have been; I don’t believe in predestination, but chance and fate sure seem to be on opposite ends of a very short bridge, don’t they? 

It’s the rare film that so unpretentiously broaches the philosophical, especially within the confines of a modern dramatic character-driven romance. It covers the minutiae and the big ideas thoroughly and resourcefully. Every shot is well-considered, every line of dialogue neatly parsed, each performance exquisitely choreographed to convey a thoroughly conceived idea in a naturalistic style. It’s a lovely, lovely film, and one of the year’s best.

Our Call: Past Lives has the air of an under-the-radar masterpiece. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.