Past lives - Nos vies d'avant

Past Lives is a beautifully understated and emotionally resonant film about the power of love, loss, and second chances. The film follows Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two childhood friends who are reunited 20 years after they were separated by Nora's family's emigration from South Korea. The film explores the complex emotions that arise when these two old friends reconnect, as they grapple with the choices they've made in their lives and the possibility of what might have been.

Song's direction is assured and sensitive, and she elicits outstanding performances from her two leads. Lee and Yoo are both incredibly charismatic and believable as Nora and Hae Sung, and their chemistry is undeniable.

The film's cinematography is gorgeous, with Shabier Kirchner's lens capturing the beauty of both Seoul and New York City. The film's score is also superb, with a haunting and evocative soundtrack that perfectly complements the film's emotional tone.

Past Lives is a beautifully made and deeply moving film that will stay with you long after you've seen it. It's a film about love, loss, and the power of second chances, and it's sure to resonate with anyone who has ever experienced the pain of separation or the joy of reunion.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Some of the things that I particularly liked about the film include:

The film's understated and realistic depiction of love and relationships.

The film's sensitive and nuanced portrayal of the Asian American experience.

The film's beautiful cinematography and evocative score.

The film's two lead performances, which are both incredibly charismatic and believable.

Overall, I thought Past Lives was a beautiful and moving film that is sure to stay with me long after I've seen it. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a thoughtful and emotionally resonant film to watch.

I loved the film, it stayed with me for days.

People who watch it will either find it to be super boring or will keep thinking about it for days.

The cinematography, the dialogues, performance and Score are just beautiful. The silent moments between them are beautiful too.

I do not recommend this to everyone, but if you love movies like Before Sunrise trilogy or the Irish movie Once or Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless mind. You will love this one too.

But, for me having watched the 2018 Indian film 96 many times I could not stop comparing these two movies. , I mean the subway scene with them holding the pole just staring at one n another.

The What ifs. Both the movies are so similar concept wise.

I really enjoyed this film. What I love about Oscar season is that I'm encouraged to watch films I normally wouldn't go to (yes I know, I'm one of those people). I think the thing I most enjoyed about this film was the purely naturalistic feel to it. Some may call this mundane but life isn't always like a romance novel. Who can really say they didn't have a connection with someone from their past that they wished they had the option to explore. Things happen in our lives and the natural reaction to that is to wonder what could have been and I love how this film shows these characters exploring that and wanting to hold on to something in their past but also acknowledging that life goes on and you can't always live that fairy tale! How it was shot was also beautiful and I really like what the cinematography team did. This is very much a worthy best film nominee!

Celine Song, in her directorial debut, makes a film whose story has little to do with the usual "movies." Past Lives is true, it is not the usual love story. It is not the usual movie love story. But it is more, because it is real, because it is true, because it is drawn from the living experience of the director. And in one way in the other, all of our lives are movies, only thanks to cinema we have the power to give a different development or ending to those stories. Instead, Song chose, bravely, to be true to what seemingly seems like a "trivial" love story of two people who are separated as children and meet again after 20 years by choice and not by chance. Two people who in the generality of their life stories, look at each other, scrutinize each other and love each other. It is a story made of silences, from which the thoughts of the two protagonists arise and arrive. It is a story made of glances and behind those glances are all the unspoken words, all those emotions that words would not render. Past Lives works because it is not what one expects from a film love story. It is real life.

The wind, the leaves, the streets, the towers; everything exists with a supple glow. There's a love for environment behind the camera, where director Celine Song stands, telling her story. Kirchner, her cinematographer, lends immense craft to the film's 35mm scenery. Nora, Hae Sung, Arthur; the three central characters are handled with wonderful grace. They easily communicate complex emotion. They're likable, and they're relatable. New York City, Seoul; I hardly know either of them practically, but now I feel like I do, in some intimate way. These two cities are dearly loved. Longing; what did you think of when you finished this film?

Past Lives is an honest, delicate, and ambling movie. Nora, once a little girl from urban Korea, chooses her path as an American writer after immigrating with her family. She marries a different writer (Arthur, a Jewish New Yorker), adopts the culture of NYC, and chases her ambition. She's still Korean, but the identity ebbs. She doesn't sound like it anymore. Hae Sung, her childhood friend who never left the country, is very much Korean; his path is that of an engineer living with his parents, which he describes as ordinary. He loves Nora deeply. He loved her when she left Seoul at twelve, and loved her still at the points in which their lives intersected. Nora loves him too, in her own complicated, almost grieving way. He is her connection to a childhood she longs for, washed away in her memories, and seldom revisited because of the complicated feelings that come with being a child immigrant.

The story is simple but it bursts at the seams with emotion and humor. Admittedly slow, but without wasting your time. I connected with all three of the main characters to some degree, each carried by an actor with the apparent gravity of a veteran superstar. They are emotionally intelligent, and they react to each other in interesting, startlingly realistic ways. Celine Song plays on a very specific feeling of aching; for a forgotten time in one's life, for an identity, or for a lover. It's particular, but looking around the audience as we left the theater, you could see that most people were in their own heads, thinking of something (or someone). We all long for something lost.

Perhaps not all of us, but probably most, have also wrestled with the feeling of permanence in the journey we choose for ourselves. You only live once, said Drake, but that's really a terrifying thought sometimes. Carving out one lifetime - engineered across thousands of individual decisions - means foregoing an infinite number of others. People deal with this in a number of ways; providence, reincarnation, and an afterlife, to name a few. Nora and Hae Sung might be soulmates, but will they know it in this lifetime, or the next?

I really can't wait for the next project Song works on, and that goes double for the cast. I sunk my teeth into this deeply romantic, deeply resonant film, which is capable of bringing immense longing to the surface. It is coated with a beautiful score and draped atop memorable settings. It's a home-run.

9/10 for making me want to visit Seoul.