Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A-

How does Past Lives hit, I wonder, depending on the personal romantic history of the person watching it? I have to imagine it varies. A good majority of its audience, I assume, had a “first love” who was not the person they are currently with, and perhaps they contemplate how they would handle being in a similar situation, meeting a childhood sweetheart not seen in person in decades but while currently in a perfectly happy marriage.

I have no way of looking at this movie through such a lens; I had no “childhood sweetheart,” and not just because I’m gay. This story really isn’t about sexuality, nor does it even really reference sex beyond the hypothetical of having children. I am still nearly two decades into the first romantic relationship I have ever had. And, still: this movie made me think, in a way no other movie ever has, about how much I love my husband. He still qualifies as my first love, though, and that’s what this movie is about. So maybe it even worked as intended on me.

Past Lives is a unique experience, in that its emotional resonance takes some time to percolate. I nearly started crying thinking about it on my way home after the movie ended, and I still can’t really say why, except that the movie permeated my soul, and it took some time for me to focus on anything else, rather than continuing to think about this deeply affecting love story.

I desperately want to use a cliché: “an instant classic.” Does anything even qualify as a “classic” anymore? What would be the most recent film for which there is any critical consensus on such a designation? Did it even come out in the twenty-first century? The Lord of the Rings, maybe? Moulin Rouge!? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind actually gets referenced in Past Lives, and that came out in 2004. How many people even still think about that movie? In Past Lives, it is brought up in the year 2011, when it had been released seven years prior. It comes up when our two would-be lovers discuss Montauk, which I completely forgot was even a setting in that movie.

All I can say is: Past Lives is every bit as worth the time and attention as any of those movies, or arguably any “classic romance” that came before them. It’s certainly unlike any other, writer-director Celine Song establishing a dreamlike tone that evokes every romantic, wistful memory you’ve ever had.

The fact that Past Lives is Celine Song’s first feature film is astonishing. She was previously a playwright, which explains her two protagonists both being writers—I have to admit, I wondered how the hell they could afford living in New York City with such jobs. This is beside the point, as Past Lives is about the life choices we make, and whether it can ever be possible to go back to a particular feeling we loved from the past. In the case of Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), they forged a quick but deeply emotional connection as twelve-year-olds in their native Korea, Nora convinced they will end up married, but having no idea her parents are about to move the family to Canada.

Twelve years later, after Nora has moved to New York, she and Hae Sung reconnect online, and this is when they make their first real connection as adults. This middle act is a peculiar experience, turning the year 2011 into a period piece, their video chats exclusively over Skype, with grainy and sometimes glitchy video. In spite of that, all of the scenes are as deeply romantic as any other in the film. I don’t think I have ever seen scenes of people video chatting so well shot—even this effectively evokes the kind of yearning these two characters are feeling, discovering they are just as desperate to be with each other as they were twelve years before. But, they have started lives and established plans that make meeting up again unfeasible.

About a year later, Greta meets Arthur (John Magaro) at an artists retreat. In spite of Arthur later fretting about possible inadequacies of his place in Greta’s life, the circumstances of their meeting are just as romantic as anything else in Past Lives, which is very much the point. Arhur jests that in a retelling of their story he’d be “the evil White guy,” but here he very pointedly isn’t. There is no villain, which is what makes the circumstances of this movie so ripe for discussion.

Any talk of suspense regarding what Nora and Hae Sung may or may not do when he finally visits New York City for the first time, another twelve years later, misses the point. Everything that actually happens is firmly grounded in reality, and to my mind is not the element up for debate. The bigger question is about the long-term futures for all three of these people. Do Nora and Arthur stay together indefinitely? Will Nora and Hae Sung finally get together, many years from now? Would that even work? There can be a pointed difference between what you yearn for and what it turns out to be once you finally get it.

There is one specific moment that has really stayed with me, when Nora breaks down, and Arthur comforts her, even though her tears are for another relationship. What a strange position to be in, for all of them. This is the kind of thing so rarely seen in cinema, a deeply unusual circumstance that still rings with an almost unnerving truth.

Past Lives starts and ends with these three characters out at a bar, deep into the night. In the opening scene, we overhear others in the bar playing that game where you try to guess what the stories are of people at other tables, and they actually skirt the truth. When we return to this moment, the perspective has long since shifted to that of Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur. There is some debate as to whether Arthur needs to be there, but Celine Song wisely never makes clear how they came to this as a group: for all we know, Nora asked Arthur to be there, perhaps not considering the likelihood that she and Hae Sung would wind up conversing in a native language Arthur mostly doesn’t understand.

It’s so easy to empathize with all three of them in this scenario, and Teo Yoo plays Hae Sung’s awkward nervousness especially well. They all feel that way, of course, and so do we, on their behalf. How often do we get a sort of love triangle in which we deeply yearn for all three of them to be okay? The most amazing thing Past Lives pulls off is how it tells a story with such specificity, and yet it will move anyone who has ever loved.

*Past Lives* will raise your hopes for their futures.

Overall: A-