By ATRIA PACAÑA
Spoilers below.
There have been several romances in fictional media where its fandoms evoke the “we will always find each other in every lifetime” sentiment in reassurance that the pairing, endgame or not, will continue to have that emotional bond beyond the end of the story.
Writer-director Celine Song wants to reshape that.
In her first feature film this year, “Past Lives” places life inside a diagram where time, places, people, and dreams are all intertwined parts. Two people just happen to be at the center of it.
Yuánfen (noun, Chinese): a relationship by fate or destiny, the binding force between two people.
In-Yun (noun, Korean): the ties between two people over the course of a lifetime; one’s connection with certain people or things.
Above are some words related to love that aren’t easily translatable to English. The latter is a concept defined by Na Young (played by Greta Lee), a Korean writer. She tells this to her Jewish-American husband Arthur (John Magaro), but is actually talking about her and her almost-ex lover Hae Sung (Teo Yoo).
The romantic drama spans 24 years, told in 3 points of the two leads’ lives. In each stage, more words fit their circumstance.
Year 2000: Na Young and Hae Sung are academic rivals and friends who go on a date set up by their parents before Na Young’s family emigrates to Toronto.
Forelsket (noun, Norwegian): euphoria you experience when you first fall in love.
Viraag (noun, Hindi): emotional pain of being separated from a loved one.
Year 2012: after finishing his military service, Hae Sung finds Na Young — now Nora — in Facebook and they reconnect from two sides of the world, videocalling as much as they could.
Kilig (noun, Tagalog): sudden feeling of inexplicable joy or exhilaration caused by an exciting and/or romantic experience.
Mamihlapinatapai (noun, Yagan): a wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start.
Hae Sung learns that Na Young is now in New York for a writer’s residency, gunning for a literary award.
Meraki (noun, Greek): labor of love, soul, and creativity; the essence of self put into a body of work.
But since she’s a playwright and her ambitions are bigger than Seoul, far away from Hae Sung, Na Young realizes there is nothing fruitful that will bear out of their distance. She tells Hae Sung that it’s best if they don’t talk for a while.
Onsra (verb, Boro): to love for the last time; bittersweet feeling of knowing a love won’t last.
Year 2024: they don’t talk for another 12 years, until they do. Hae Sung reunites with her during a short vacation in the States.
Retrouvailles (noun, French): the happiness of meeting again for a long time.
But Na Young or Nora is now married to a Jewish American whom she met during her writer’s residency 12 years ago and Hae Sung is in a limbo relationship with a woman he’s hesitant to marry, so the audience watches the both of them tread each other carefully.
La Douleur Exquise (noun, French): exquisite pain of wanting someone you can never have.
They have a night on the town, catching up and acting as if it’s just two old, normal friends catching up. In the end, Hae Sung goes home with the prospect of the two of them being together in other lives, leaving Na Young to hug her husband by the steps of their apartment.
Cwtch (noun, Welsh): more than an embrace; a safe haven.
There is no doubt that this is a realist film. When it comes to speculating, it asks and asks questions about who people are to other people across time zones, across thousands of miles, in the absence and presence of time, but it rarely answers. It just depicts and shows. It hands the audience, “Here. These are two people trying to figure it out. Getting so close, succeeding, misstepping, failing.”
In the instances that the film does answer, it attempts through visuals.
First, with the shot of their 12-year-old selves leaving. As Na Young goes up the stairs, she leaves for a better life, while Hae Sung continues on with his in South Korea. It then parallels the ending where she again goes up the stairs to her New York apartment with Arthur, while Hae Sung is now the one who leaves. Either way, in this life, they are still apart.
And second, Na Young and Hae Sung’s solemn conversation is purposely done in front of the carousel. The cyclical motion of the ride mirrors how they still in some ways yearn for each other, and the choice of the carousel itself is reflective of how their hearts are still so young. But the carousel is now but a backdrop, a reminder that they are now older and more distant.
“Past Lives” makes use of division to portray that distance. Writer vs. Engineer. Art vs. STEM. New York vs. Seoul. In fact, there are questions of what Seoul is, what New York is, and what Canada is as more than just places to be in.
The places are lives, full contained entities, manifestations of Nora/Na Young’s dreams. Seoul, although it is her native land and contains people like Hae Sung who make her happy, feels like it’s dragging her down.
Meanwhile, NY and Canada are places she needs to be to seek her wants of happiness, fulfillment, accomplishment, and recognition.
The questions are recurring, most prominent in the dialogue. Why do I have to go back? Why are you going to New York? Where are we supposed to be? Why would you do that? Why would you come look for me?
Since the time periods, people they meet, places they live in, and Nora’s dreams are all significant, the film most likely wouldn’t work if it wasn’t Asian. From the loss of a part of identity through Na Young’s adjustment of accent, to food being used as a love language, the subject matter of diaspora and native languages can only be touched because this is a story about people of color.
Song does a brilliant job of interspersing those elements while maintaining a grounded message. This wasn’t a plot twisty movie where Arthur could suddenly infer Na Young and Hae Sung’s “if only” tearful conversation at the bar and becomes resentful or fearful that Nora would cheat on him. His character, who provides security and stability, is the perfect husband for her, and she, who conjures creativity and inspiration for him, is the perfect wife. They both stay that way ’til the end, because life — time, people, places, dreams — is more complicated than one may think, and Nora has grown out of her young brash self to dramatically leave her boring white husband for the exciting Korean childhood friend.
Or at least, not in this life. Not in this time, not in this place, not in this state of who they are, not in this dream.
Maybe in the next.
Score: 5 thousand layers of In-Yun over 5.
