Film Review

Past Lives (2023) — complex immigrant romance full of yearning

Two childhood friends are wrested apart after one’s family emigrates from South Korea. 20 years later, they’re reunited for one fateful week…

The first few seconds of Celine Song’s decades-spanning, poignantly lived-in debut feature, Past Lives, are about assumptions. As cinematographer Shabier Kirschner’s camera slowly pushes in on our three protagonists — Nora (Greta Lee), Hae-sung (Teo Yoo), and Arthur (John Magaro) — sitting at a bar together, an off-screen couple remarks on what could possibly be the relation between them. One of them conjectures that Nora and Hae-sung are a couple, while Arthur is their tour guide. The other thinks that Nora and Arthur are the couple in question, while Hae-sung is their Korean friend. All the while, Kirschner’s camera continues to unwaveringly move forward, until Nora is the only person in the centre of the frame, her face laced with both a sense of mild excitement and deep uncertainty. The answer to the couple’s inquiry, as it turns out, is far more complex than either of them could have…