It’s anchored by an incredible, star-making performance by Greta Lee - who captures in equal measure Nora’s yearning for Hae Sung and the prickly battle to become an artist. It’s heavy with longing and desire and draws in themes related to belonging. Sensitively drawn with an epic, romantic scale, Past Lives is a film about an intangible relationship that is neither a friendship nor a romance. A voiceover from two strangers across the bar speculates, ‘Are Nora and Hae Sung lovers or siblings?’ ‘Who is the man behind them?’ ‘How do they relate to each other?’ As Song explains in our interview, the answer is only clear once we go on the entire journey with them. Nora turns towards Hae Sung, her husband, sitting silently behind them. It opens with the three main characters, Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur, Nora’s husband (played John Magaro), sitting at a bar. The film feels lived in, reflective in form and also narrative. For decades, it charts the almost-romance between Nora (Greta Lee) and her childhood crush, Hae Sung (Yoo Teo), and how fate keeps drawing them together and pulling them apart.
Inspired partly by events that happened to Song, who was born in Korea and immigrated to Canada before permanently settling in New York to become a writer, Past Lives is an unusual love story.
The film premiered at Sundance earlier this year to rave reviews and is being distributed by A24, who’ve helped reshape the face of contemporary American independent cinema with releases like Moonlight, Uncut Gems and last year’s Best-Picture Oscar winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once. With a background in theatre, Celine Song came out of nowhere to deliver her first feature film, Past Lives.
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