All of us have paths not taken — mostly insignificant, a few consequential — that prompt occasional curiosity and speculation.
But some folks obsess over an emotionally weighty What If, to the point that it interferes with their ability to focus on the alternative happiness that has been achieved.
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| What might they be thinking? Nora (Greta Lee), flanked by Hae Sung (Teo Yoo, left) and Arthur (John Magaro) contemplates the life choices that have led to this moment. |
We hear an off-camera couple try to suss out the dynamic (a game we’ve all played, while people-watching). Who is the woman with? Are the Koreans siblings? Are the guys with each other? Is somebody being dumped?
Therein lies a tale…
We jump back 24 years, to Seoul, and meet 12-year-old chums Na Young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min), as they head home after a day at school. She’s in tears, having come in second to Hae Sung, on a class paper. He turns this back on her, pointing out that he usually has come in second behind her, and besides; shouldn’t she be happy for his success?
After all, they’re inseparable besties.
Even so, she aspires to greatness: She wants to win a Nobel Prize.
Sadly, events are about to separate them. Nora’s parents are emigrating the family to New York. Na Young will be given a new “American” name — Nora — and her sister will become Michelle.
But before this occurs, Na Young and Hae Sung’s mothers arrange for the two to have a “date” … perhaps more “play date,” but — as cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s playful tableaus reveal — love clearly is in the air, at a 12-year-old level that’s deeper than a simple crush.
Their final parting is telling, due to the way Song and Kirchner frame the moment: After a perfunctory “Bye” from Hae Sung, Na Young charges up the steep street to her home, without looking back; he watches for a moment, before sadly heading along the level side street to his home.
Ambition vs. devotion.
The story jumps ahead 12 years. Nora (now played by Greta Lee) works hard to establish herself as a noteworthy playwright in New York’s bustling theater scene. Back in Seoul, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) has survived military service and settled into an “ordinary” life as an engineer. He and Nora lost touch long ago.
But they’re both curious. Long telephone conversations with her mother (Ji Hye Yoon) remind Nora of her Korean heritage, reviving memories of the pain over having left it behind. She’s also intrigued by Inyun, the Korean concept of fate: that things happen for a reason, and that if people are meant to be together, they’ve had “8,000 earlier encounters” that decree it.
Hae Sung, much more simply, still loves her. Never got over it.
He tracks her down via the Internet; she’s charmed by the reconnection. They chat, Skype and text with increasing frequency. The delicacy of Song’s touch with her two actors shines here. Lee’s Nora is perky, enthusiastic, often rushed; Yoo’s Hae Sung is shy, quiet and reserved. His expression acknowledges awareness that he’s somehow still in her shadow; we wonder if he’ll work up the courage to confess his love.
Despite the yawning chasms of distance and divergent personalities, we want them to succeed, and therefore hang on every word and expression, as Nora and Hae Sung maintain contact. But her life is peripatetic: bouncing from one seminar course to another, traveling into the hinterlands for writers’ retreats. At one of the latter, she meets Arthur (John Magaro), a novelist-to-be.
Hae Sung teasingly asks if she still wants to earn a Nobel. No, Nora replies, a Pulitzer.
After things progress for a bit (details not revealed here!) we bounce forward another 12 years, back to the present day. Nora and Arthur are married, thus far childless. He adores her; she’s similarly devoted, at peace with this American life.
At least she thinks so. But what would happen, if Hae Sung reappeared?
And now, as Song’s film slides into its third act, we understand the significance of the opening tableau, with Nora seated between these two men. Hae Sung does visit.
The most powerfully romantic stories — the ones that linger in our memory — focus not so much on love and attainment, but on desire, yearning and tough choices. (I’ve long remembered this marvelous line from 1973’s A Touch of Class: “Do you love her enough to give her up?”)
The Korean-born Song has drawn this drama from her own life, having married a New Yorker after leaving a childhood sweetheart behind, and then been newly confronted with the latter, during a visit. (“I was sitting there between these two men who I know love me in different ways,” she recounts, in her press notes, “and I’m the only reason why they are even talking to each other.”)
The takeaway here is this implacable reality: We get to live only one life, and we need to make peace with it.
The richly nuanced performances brings this dynamic to an almost unbearable emotional intensity during the third act. Arthur knows that Nora loves him, to the best of her ability. Magaro makes this clear … but his expression also reflects an awareness that she’ll never love him the way she clearly still loves Hae Sung.
“You dream in a language I can’t understand,” Arthur tells her, at one point.
Hae Sung is the epitome of constancy, his devotion unchanged. Yet despite the adoration that shows vividly in Yoo’s gaze, it’s tempered by his awkward awareness that he doesn’t belong in the world — the life — that Nora has built for herself.
Can that divide be bridged?
Lee’s glances and body language, speaking volumes, are all over the map. Nora is overwhelmed; security and stability vie with desire and temptation. She hesitates; she’s mildly coquettish; she’s bold; she withdraws.
All this angst is heightened further by the poignant, piano-based score by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen.
This is a deeply moving, almost invasively personal filmmaking debut by Song. But her pacing is deliberate, at times unrushed to the point of somnambulance. (Translation: Some viewers will find it unbearably slow.) Song also drops an occasional stitch. Nora’s sister, such a vibrant part of her life in the first act, virtually vanishes in acts two and three. That seems … odd.
Small stuff. Folks who love to bathe in romantic anguish — and I confess to being one of them — will adore Past Lives.
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