Past Lives opens with a conundrum. A trio perches at a bar: a woman and two men. They’re loosened by wine and conversation, and yet a faint melancholy floats through the air. They trade furtive glances and longing stares; it’s difficult to tell who’s looking at who. Soon we’ll find out who they are: playwright Nora (Greta Lee), her American husband Arthur (John Magaro) and Hae Sung, her childhood sweetheart from South Korea (Teo Yoo). For now, though, all we hear is a background conversation between a pair of perplexed onlookers trading guesses into their relationship. Are they co-workers? Tourists? Lovers? Which guy is she with?
This might be the most explicitly autobiographical moment in Past Lives, a film which follows Nora as she reconnects with Hae Sung multiple times across multiple decades and continents. Less a love story than a meditation on what-ifs, it has propelled its debut director Celine Song to a rarefied strata of acclaim, accruing both rave reviews and early, frantic Oscars buzz since its Sundance premiere earlier this year. The idea for the film came to Song when she too was sitting in an East Village cocktail joint, sandwiched between an old flame from Seoul, who spoke only Korean, and her husband, the screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who spoke only English.
