Opinion ‘Past Lives’: What does it mean to love in a time of shifting borders

The people you leave behind can lay claim to a part of you that those who surround you in your new avatar can never access. And so, when these figures from the past reappear in your present, your reality is disrupted

A screengrab from the movie Past Lives.

Rohan Banerjee

July 14, 2023 04:13 PM IST First published on: Jul 14, 2023 at 04:13 PM IST

The little things are ones that stay with you after you’ve left the movie theatre. The scribbled “Keys, Phone, Wallet” on the wall of a dormitory room (the ritual incantation we all murmur at the doorway); the once-familiar ringtone of a Skype call that served as the soundtrack of a relationship; the moment when Nora (Greta Lee) embraces Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) — who has travelled 13 hours to meet her for the first time in 24 years — and he does not know what to do with his hands. The little things are what makes Past Lives, Celine Song’s debut directorial feature film, unforgettable.

The film unfolds in three parts, each separated by 12 years, where the lives of the protagonists intersect. In the first act, we are introduced to the tween sweethearts, Na Young and Hae Sung, as they stroll through the streets of Seoul and visit parks on chaperoned dates. Na Young is yet to become Nora but the spectre of her impending emigration to Canada looms large over their fledgling romance. The farewell they bid each other as children, standing at a fork in the road, is perfunctory but portentous; you sense that this goodbye will echo through the rest of their lives. They rediscover each other in the second act of the movie and indulge in a brief, virtual courtship. Their parting is once again orchestrated by Nora, who is studying to be a playwright in New York. She has crossed too many borders and has far too much at stake, she explains, to afford to get distracted.

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Another 12 years pass before we meet them again in the third and final act. By now, Nora is married to Arthur (John Magaro). Hae Sung travels to New York to meet her and seems content merely to be in her presence. The intensity of his desire is equalled only by his determination to not act on it. In the movie, Nora talks about inyun, the Korean belief that meetings between people are predestined through their interactions in past lives. It is inyun that keeps bringing Nora and Hae Sung back together and relegates Arthur to being the third wheel in this fated, fairytale romance. It is in this final segment — when the vulnerabilities and anxieties of Hae Sung, Nora, and Arthur converge — that the film truly sparkles.

Past Lives is a masterful piece of cinema and the cast and crew deserve the accolades of the critics (and audiences) for their technical brilliance. However, in addition to the excellence of the craft, perhaps one of the reasons for the acclaim the movie has received, is its theme: The exploration of relationships in the age of immigration.

The world has become a place where people are fluid, moving within and across state borders in increasing numbers. The quest for prosperity makes one leave old lives and homes behind in search of new ones, but these migrations are never absolute. You may move to a different city or country and adopt its customs, but you cannot completely shed your earlier life, your language, your identity. The people you leave behind can lay claim to a part of you that those who surround you in your new avatar can never access. And so, when these figures from the past reappear in your present — as happens with Nora — your reality is disrupted.

Meeting Hae Sung in New York is a discordant note in the placid American life that Nora has created for herself, and she struggles with the feelings of confusion and conflict he brings. Crucially, unlike stereotypical depictions of love triangles, it is not adulterous passion or the inevitability of inyun that assails Nora. Her dilemma in the final act of the movie is not triggered by Hae Sung, her childhood crush, but by Hae Sung as an embodiment of the alternate life where she never left Seoul, never met her husband, never became Nora. His presence makes these alternate realities feel more tangible and compels Nora to question the choices of her past that have locked her into the present. Would different choices have led to a different — better — life?

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These parallel lives are what immigrants, like Nora, carry with them wherever they go. It is what causes them to be forever split; forever occupying a liminal place that straddles both the past and the present — no more the young Korean girl Hae Sung fell in love with, but dreaming in a language her husband does not understand. The uncertain potential of these lives is what drives people to move, allows them to uproot themselves and lay new foundations elsewhere. But it also means that the joys of future discoveries are always tinged with the regret of an unfulfilled past. Perhaps the words of a different expatriate, Lt Nescaffier (Stephen Park), from a different movie, The French Dispatch, are best suited to describe what Nora — and every other immigrant — eventually learn to be true: “Seeking something missing. Missing something left behind”.

The writer is a Mumbai-based lawyer