"Past Lives": A gentle drama about first love!

"Past Lives" is a romantic drama film written and directed by Celine Song in her feature debut. The film premiered at the Sundance Festival on January 21 and was released to theatrical distribution on June 2 through the company A24. The film explores the complex emotions that arise when two old acquaintances reconnect as they confront the choices they have made in their lives and the possibilities of what could have been or what could have been.

The beginning of the film places us in South Korea and we follow two twelve-year-olds, Na Jung and Hae Sung, who go to the same class and share pubertal crushes. The plot arises when Na Jung's family immigrates to Canada, she becomes Nora and loses contact with her friends from Korea. Twelve years later, due to a combination of circumstances, the two of them get in touch again and establish communication as if they had never been separated. We see the conversations become routine, and the relationship becomes little more than daily calls, only to be diluted as each of them has other plans and neither can say exactly what they want.

"Past Lives" is a film with multiple contradictions. He is patient and almost relaxed in the pace of his scenes, showing small moments in the lives of two characters and their relationship. On the other hand and relatively speaking, the film also accelerates its narrative because it gives us the feeling of passing 24 years in those lives during one hundred minutes of running time.

The film is romantic because it is about a relationship that somehow, despite all the obstacles, lasts and remains deeply felt for more than two decades, but the story is also fundamentally pragmatic because it understands that the relationships and emotions of our youth belong to that period - every time we nostalgically remember something or someone, it means we have become older, more mature and hopefully wiser about those times, places and feelings.

However, there is another contradiction in all this - such memories are always with us, even when they belong to the past. They existed then, but in a way, they still exist now. It will probably always exist somewhere in the back of the mind and deep in the heart and there is nothing anyone can do about it. "Past Lives" is a genuinely sensitive romantic film that is patient with its characters and their emotions – a resonant, intimate story that unfolds naturally and that qualitatively examines longing, connection, and the choices that make life.

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Post By: Vanessa F.