This is a great time for Korean film right now – not least because the success of the films of South Korea, and expat Korean film-makers like Lee Isaac Chung, are so diverse. Minari, Parasite, Decision to Leave, Escape from Mogadishu - all totally different.
But I have to come clean. Much as I admired all of these films, I couldn’t warm to them quite as enthusiastically as everyone else. Until now. Until Past Lives.
Past Lives, astonishingly, is the debut film of Canadian-Korean playwright-director Celine Song, and already people are claiming it’s the best film so far this year.
Photo: Screenshot
I not only agree whole-heartedly, but I’ll be very surprised if anyone takes its title before Christmas. It’s absolutely flawless.
Past Lives opens on three people in a bar - a white American man, an Asian woman, an Asian man. And a sign of the confidence of this film is the opening dialogue is between two people we don’t see and who never appear again in the film.
They’re us really.
We flash back 24 years to Seoul, South Korea, where two 12-year-old best friends – he’s Hae Sung, she’s Na Young – walk home from school.
She’s crying. She’s always crying, we’re told. This time it’s because he beat her in an exam for a change.
But it’s almost the end of their golden weather. Na Young is about to leave the country. She and her family are about to emigrate to Canada. As they pack, they acclimatize themselves with a bit of Leonard Cohen.
Despite being soul-mates – In-yun as they say in Korea – Hae Sung and Na Young, now calling herself Nora, have no contact for 12 years.
They reconnect briefly via the Internet, but the tyranny of distance makes it too hard. Both move on with their lives. Nora gets married to a nice American chap called Arthur.
And then one day, there’s a re-connection. By then, Nora and Arthur have moved to New York. In fact, that was the main reason they got married – so Nora could get a Green Card to work in the States.
She tells Arthur that Hae Sung is visiting New York and wants to catch up.
It’s a situation fraught with possibilities. The combination of first love, of nostalgia and homesickness is surely one of the most potent there is.
It’s like the best bits of Romeo and Juliet, Brief Encounter, Casablanca – every great romance in movies!
And what makes Past Lives so fascinating is how deftly director Song shifts focus between the three characters.
Initially we see it from the point of view of Nora, the one most like Song herself – an immigrant, a fiercely ambitious playwright, suddenly confronted with her past life.
And then we see Hae Sung’s life. He feels he’s been unsuccessful, certainly compared to Nora.
He finds himself wondering – what if? What if Nora had stayed in Korea? Would they have married? Was their love fated, in-yun? And if so, fated to succeed or to fail?
And then we find ourselves with Arthur – decent, loving, but, in his terms, not remotely romantic.
Certainly nothing like as dashing as the man from Korea who travelled the world in search of his one true love…
And each time we shift focus – from Arthur to Guinevere to Lancelot, if you like – our view changes. Is it really a romantic eternal triangle – who gets the girl? Is it the pull of the past, dragging you back to who you really are?
Is it a clash between real life and fantasy? And if so, which one is the reality?
I don’t want to tell you too much – frankly I don’t want to tell you anything. You need to see Past Lives yourself.
But I will say this. The three lead performances – Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro – are absolutely stunning, as are the kids playing young versions of Nora and Hae Sung.
But the point of Past Lives is writer-director Song. Every step, every choice, every idea she comes up with proves to be the right one, including the ending. Past Lives has the best payoff since “here’s looking at you kid”. As I say, best movie of the year.
