Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023) wr. Celine Song; Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magarc
This is a perfect film, to the point where it is unremarkable. Two days after watching it I had to look back into the records to remember what it was I'd seen so that I could write this.
Peter Bradshaw:
How extraordinary to think that this is Song’s feature debut. It’s delicate, sophisticated and yet also somehow simple, direct, even verging on the cheesy. ... I found myself remembering the wrenching final moments of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, with Tony Leung murmuring his pain into a stone hollow in Angkor Wat ... the past lives of Na-young and Hae-sung are their childhoods, preserved and exalted in their memory and by modern communications. Past Lives is a glorious date movie, and a movie for every occasion, too. As ever with films like this, there is an auxiliary pleasure in wondering how much of her own past life Song has used. It’s a must-see.
Wikipedia:
Manola Darghis writing for The New York Times compared the film to French romantic cinema complimenting its restraint in the presentation of its main themes stating: "The movie’s modesty — its intimacy, human scale, humble locations and lack of visual oomph — is one of its strengths. The characters live in homes that are pleasant yet ordinary, the kind that you can imagine hanging out in, the kind you want to hang out in. There are few big, look-at-me details, though you might notice a poster for Jacques Rivette’s 1974 classic Céline and Julie Go Boating in Nora’s father’s home office in Seoul." Writing in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw was fulsome [sic] in his praise of the film comparing it to those of Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach, and Greta Gerwig. He said of the film: "Past Lives is a glorious date movie, and a movie for every occasion, too. As ever with films like this, there is an auxiliary pleasure in wondering how much of her own past life Song has used. It's a must-see." Collider ranked it number 7 on its list of the "20 Best Drama Movies of the 2020s So Far," calling it "a story that could only exist because of modern circumstances, but feels timeless in its approach. How does someone choose between two lovers, one that represents the most fruitful days of her youth, and the other someone she has grown to love as part of her reality? Celine Song examines these critical conversations through the perspective of an immigrant story."
Wikipedia page.
IMDb page.
Garry Gillard | reviews | New: 16 December, 2023 | Now: 16 December, 2023