Past Lives
The Tender Awkwardness of Opportunities Past
If an opening scene of a movie was ever an indication of its tone, it’s the opening scene of Past Lives, written and directed by Celine Song and starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro.
Our three main characters Nora (Lee), Hae Sung (Yoo) and Arthur (Magaro) are sitting at a bar. While the former two are talking and smiling, the latter is staring awkwardly into his drink. We observe them for a couple of seconds, until disembodied voices, presumably belonging to the people who are actually observing them from across the room and with whom we have the pleasure of people-watching together, start a guessing game, as to who those three are to each other and why they’re here.
The Asians are siblings, and the white guy is the woman’s boyfriend, no, maybe the white guy is the Asian couple’s one American friend, or they’re colleagues who are for some reason sitting at a bar at 3 a.m. Three distinct possibilities, three lives, each and every one as true or false as the next one. Nora turns and looks directly at the camera, smiles, and we’re transported into a flashback – 24 years ago.
Nora (then Seung Ah) and Hae Sung are childhood friends and budding sweethearts, until Nora’s family decides to emigrate to Canada. As they see each other for the last time, Nora doesn’t have the heart or the words to tell Hae Sung about either her impending emigration or her feelings, and so their last playdate is encapsulated in the fabric of the movie and its ever-expanding list of lost opportunities.
Twelve years later, Nora is in college studying to be a playwright in New York, her Korean is rusty and she’s living the American dream. On a whim, she googles Hae Sung and finds out that he’s been looking for her on her father’s Facebook page. They reconnect and start a fledgling romance, talking almost every day on Skype. Their conversations are tentative, tender and tinged with the awkwardness of online communication – lost connections, glitches and inappropriate frozen expressions.
The awkwardness, however, goes deeper. It permeates every sentence when Nora searches for words in her rusty Korean, it populates the fault lines between their very different lives and cultural backgrounds, and it holds them in place as it becomes increasingly obvious that they can’t and won’t meet in person. As they drift apart, this moment becomes another time capsule – another “what if”, forever frozen in a blurry Skype image on an early 2000s laptop.
Another twelve years go by and we meet Nora and Arthur at customs control at the Canada-US border, as they’re being insistently, albeit not overly harshly, questioned on the purpose of their travel:
Customs Officer: Why were in you in Canada? – Arthur: To visit her family.
Nora smiles.
Customs Officer: What is the purpose of your visit to New York? – Arthur: We live here.
Nora smiles.
Customs Officer: What do you do for a living? – Arthur: We’re writers.
Customs Officer: Excuse me? – Arthur: We’re writers.
They exchange glances. Nora smiles.
Customs Officer: Are you related? – Nora/Both: We’re married.
Although Nora is a constant in the movie and her experiences are front and center, there’s an air of stillness around her, an aura of unsaid words and neutral facial expressions. The opportunities of her past lives seem to weigh her down as she awkwardly glitches in and out of existence in the tentative moments when we see her on-screen. So, it’s Arthur who has to explain their lives into existence when we begin the third and final chapter of the movie.
After Hae Sung partially breaks up with his girlfriend, he decides to go to New York to see Nora under the guise of taking a vacation. They meet and talk, now full-on adults with appropriate, unshakeable convictions about life, love and marriage. They spend the day walking and talking, traversing a beautifully lit and scored urban landscape. Very romantic, very cinematic.
In all of their encounters throughout the movie Nora and Hae Sung (even their child selves) have great chemistry, which cements in the viewer a profound sense of loss when it comes to their missed chances. Their scenes are warmly lit, overlayed with the golden haze of days gone by and the soundtrack by Chris Bear and Daniel Rossen, both of indie darling Grizzly Bear fame, creates an atmosphere of tender longing, be it for each other or for a different life. Their relationship is pure fantasy, full of nooks and crannies ready to be filled in, romanticized and exploited for pure romantic pleasure.
In contrast, Nora and Arthur’s relationship feels lived in and almost boring. Their scenes are cramped, the actors positioned impossibly close to each-other in tight central frames. There is no looseness to their interactions, no space for interpretation and although we don’t get to know them very well, it seems like the kind of relationship one doesn’t fantasize about very often, the kind that only comes about years after the happy ending of a romance story.
Finally, we arrive at the scene from the beginning of the movie, but now from our main trio’s perspective. Hae Sung’s English is about as bad as Arthur’s Korean, so most of the talking falls to Nora, as she acts as the interpreter and cultural bridge on their very awkward dinner date. While she’s interpreting, choosing what to include and what to exclude from her translations, her elusiveness, her simultaneous blending in and standing out in both cultures, her glitching in and out of the reality the movie has constructed for her, makes her an archetype I haven’t seen in a while – the migrant interpreter.
During their day out, Nora tells Hae Sung that she and Arthur got married very soon after they met, because she needed a Green Card, leaving no doubt that she loves Arthur, but also keeping to herself whether she would’ve married that soon, were it not for this transactional aspect. Hae Sung, on the other hand, struggles with the thought of getting married in the first place, as he’s convinced that his mediocrity in life, career and financial status doesn’t make him good enough for his girlfriend. Although, they both see marriage as transactional, at least in part, Nora describes Hae Sung’s notion of it as “so very Korean” when she later talks to Arthur and in this instant, it seems that her Koreanness is hidden even from her.
At home, she tells Arthur how she feels both very Korean and not at all at the same time when she is with Hae Sung, while Arthur becomes ever so slightly irritated by the subject altogether. He asks her whether Hae Sung is attractive, to which she replies yes, kind of, in a very Korean manner, but that she doesn’t think that she’s attracted to him. Again, giving a less than defined answer to Arthur’s need for some stability. As there are no constants with Nora, Arthur continues to question her in bed in an attempt to get some peace of mind. Yes, he knows that she won’t up and leave with Hae Sung, but does he really, and will it be because of him or because she doesn’t want to abandon her career? Yes, of course, she loves him, but he also kinda finds it hard to believe. Nora’s reactions throughout this conversation remain subdued, almost neutral and noncommittal.
Although Nora has left Korea behind in her early teens, she has retained enough of it to never fully fit into her new environment. Her identity is in constant flux, so much so that it’s hard to pinpoint the person underneath or get a clear reaction or answer out of her. While Hae Sung is still mostly talking to the little girl he knew in Seoul and the hypothetical Korean woman she’s become, Arthur only refers to her Canadian/American side, the playwright, the one who married him for a Green Card and has a mysterious other side which he can’t access due to language and cultural barriers.
On a deeper level, both men feel the lack of substance in their assumptions about Nora, they feel that one part is always missing and that they can’t get a straight picture of the woman they love. Instead, they cope in their own ways. Hae Sung looks to Korean mysticism and the concept of In Yun – fate, which brings or doesn’t bring people together. For him, everything happened for a reason, and he and Nora, despite being tied by fate, simply are not meant to be together. Arthur, on the other hand, chooses a much more cerebral approach, looking for constant reassurance that what they have is real, that Nora’s life is as affected by him as his is by her.
When Nora and Hae Sung part, it seems final. They say their goodbyes, assure themselves and each other that their lives never took the “wrong” turn, that everything is as it should be. There’s just as much romanticism in their words as self-delusion. Delusion or not, however, Nora becomes real in this very instance, finally anchored in reality by the pain of their farewell and her love for both Arthur and Hae Sung. After Hae Sung’s Uber drives away, Nora drags herself back home, where Arthur is waiting for her on the front porch.
Wordless, she starts crying as he hugs her. The hug is honest and awkward, as though she somehow still doesn’t fit onto his form, and the cry is loud and ugly. They’ll grow together eventually, by living their awkward, messy and beautiful present life. Or not.