Past Lives

 Everyman

I suppose it would be a bit obvious to describe Past Lives as a Korean Brief Encounter: but Past Lives feels a lot like a Korean Brief Encounter.

There are basically only three characters. Na Yong (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) went to school together in Seoul, where they had a very brief and very innocent crush on each other. Then Na Yong's parents immigrated. (Is saying "immigrate" rather than "emigrate" a nuance of the Korean language, or an error in the sub-titles?) In New York as a young adult and on a whim, she makes contact with him again. They communicate via Zoom for a few weeks, but then break it off. Some years later, Hae Sung comes to New York and visits the now-married Na Yong.

Three meetings, at ages twelve, twenty four, and thirty six. I don't think it is a spoiler to say that nothing happens. Na Yong does not run away back to Korea. She does not have a furtive one-night stand, or even think about it. Her husband Arthur (John Magaro) is not particularly jealous, although he does find the situation awkward. Hae Sung goes back to Seoul and his girl-friend and Na Yong goes home to her East Village apartment. The whole thing is a character study: a series of conversations in which people say less than they mean. Hae Sung doesn't speak English and Arthur doesn't speak Korean so the three way conversations are especially difficult. As the years pass, small nuances of conversation ("psycho", "whoah!") take on special meanings. Neither Hae Sung nor Na Yong can quite say why a very brief childhood friendship is so important: but there is very little childhood-nostalgia, in the expected Western sense, in the movie. It's completely un-mawkish. It's very beautifully filmed, with many dockside meetings with skyscrapers in the middle distance, and many long pans across urban landscapes. The early shot of the two children walking home along different paths on their last day of school is very touching in its simplicity.

The movie gently flirts with lots of interesting ideas, but the the narrative foreplay is obviously never going to consummated. I suppose the underlying theme is "what if?" Arthur, a novelist, thinks that his relationship with Na Yong is unromantic -- they just happened to meet and decided to marry -- where her relationship with a long-lost childhood sweetheart is classic story material. But in a story, he would have to take on the role of the jealous husband. If Na Yong had met a person other than Arthur in New York she might have married them and been equally happy: but if her parents had not immigrated she might now by married to Hae Sung. Underlying it all is the recurrent notion of in yeon: the Korean belief that you feel an instant connection with people who were important to you in past lives. When two people marry for love, this is evidence that they knew each other in thousands of previous incarnations. Which stands in for the question: can a feeling of connection between two people who have only briefly met be more real than a relationship which has developed over years of actually living together?

Critics have called this the best film of 2023. It was certainly the best subtitled Korean romance in which nothing actually happens I has seen this year. It impressed me and fascinated me but it didn't move or engage me. I don't think I quite bought the basic premise. I don't believe in in yeon. That's also my problem, come to think of it, with Brief Encounter.

Hi,

I'm Andrew.

I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.

If you enjoy these reviews, please consider leaving a tip on the Ko-Fi platform. 

If you can afford it, please consider becoming a Patreon, by pledging £1 or more each time I publish an essay on the main blog. (I don't charge for these little reviews.) 

Please do not feed the troll. 

Pledge £1 for each essay.

Make a one-off donation on Ko-Fi