150 Word Review: 'Past Lives' (2023)
150 Word Review: 'Past Lives' (2023)
The one that got away
Director/writer Celine Song's debut feature, Past Lives, is a wise, gentle romantic drama about paths taken and not taken.
Greta Lee stars as a playwright living in New York who immigrated to Canada with her family from South Korea as a child. She didn't leave much behind except for her childhood crush, Hae Sung. Twelve years later, they reconnect. And twelve years after that, Hae Sung, listless and newly single, flies 13 hours to seek out his old beloved friend, who is now married.
Teo Yoo's Hae Sung is melancholy and vulnerable, a man who longs for what could have been. John Magaro is Nora's husband, Arthur, a Jewish writer who embraces his spouse's culture with respectful enthusiasm. They form an unlikely and brief love triangle for a night—three hearts linked over years and oceans. Who you fall for isn't as important as when you fall for them.