PAST LIVES

 Once in awhile a subtitled or largely subtitled movie makes its way into our multiplexes but usually only after it's won a few major awards. Of course, sometimes distributors just sense a hit, maybe due to festival word-of-mouth. Celine Song's "Past Lives" would appear to be one such movie, all the more surprising since it marks Song's debut. Of course, it is a love story and love stories sell, even ones with subtitles.

In begins in the present with a Asian couple sitting talking in a bar, (we don't hear what they are saying), before going back 24 years to when they were both children in Seoul and clearly very fond of each other. The film then jumps forward 12 years when the girl, now known as Nora and living in New York, and the boy Jung Hae Sung, meet on Facebook after he tracks her down online. It is inevitable they will meet again in person but are they 'destined' for each other?

This is a love story for the digital age when platforms like Facebook make communication across continents easy and instantaneous and watching them meet again online as adults is beautiful, moving and a testament to the acting skills of Greta Lee as Nora and Teo Yoo as Jung Hae Sung and it is clear it should appeal to a mass audience and deservedly so. Of course, unlike love stories of the past it shows just how easy it is to begin and end a relationship when no actual physical contact is required.

Of course, we know from the opening shot that they do meet again and spend time together but they have both met other people and it takes a period of 24 years, (it moves forward another 12 years from that online meeting), to close the circle and the casualness of online chat gives way to the awkwardness of physical touch.

In its way "Past Lives" is like a multinational version of "When Harry Met Sally", the story of a love between a man and a woman not founded on sex but on friendship and perhaps that is the greatest love of all. It would be seriously amiss of me to reveal the ending in a love story that could go either way but Song handles the emotions on display with the lightest of touches and the greatest of understanding and both Lee and Yoo deliver award-worthy performances. Even if ultimately this does attract only an art-house audience let us hope it is a large art-house audience as this may turn out to be the best film of 2023.