‘Past Lives’ Review: Celine Song’s Transcendent Debut Is Destined to Be One of 2023’s Best Films

IndieWire ^ | January 21, 2023 | David Erlich

[sphinx]

Of all the writers retreats in all the summer towns in all of New York, he had to walk into hers. As the sun fades on a perfect Montauk night — setting the stage for a first kiss ... Nora (Greta Lee) tells Arthur (John Magaro) about the Korean concept of In-Yun, which suggests that people are destined to meet one another if their souls have overlapped a certain number of times before. When Arthur asks Nora if she really believes in all that, the Seoul-born woman sitting across from him invitingly replies that it’s just “something Korean people say to seduce someone.”

... Nora’s family makes the decision to leave Seoul when she’s still just a kid, and that choice has such a one-way impact on the trajectory of her life that her Korean has gotten rusty by the time she reconnects with Hae Sung over Skype in her twenties. His traditional Koreanness becomes a foreign object to her. Not only is it a kind of screen unto itself, but also one so impenetrable that Nora doesn’t even seem to notice how beautiful her former math rival has become as a grown man. (How convenient it is for both of these people that each of their childhood sweethearts turned out to be ridiculously attractive. And also inconvenient.) To her, Hae Sung is every Korean guy, and maybe even Korea itself. At the same time, he’s also the only man among a planet of billions who knows who Nora was before she was reborn into the hyphenate identity she’s maintained and expanded upon for her entire adult life. He knows the only Nora who Arthur will never be able to meet and couldn’t hope to understand even if he did.

[Albion Wilde]

For purposes of the movie ping list, "good" movies are conservative..... You have probably read my standard rant on this before.

I had not; and the entire paragraph is excellent!

[Albion Wilde]

My guess is that Nora's old flame from Korea in the movie -- remember, they were 12 when they parted; they had an age-appropriate crush on each other but nothing more -- is fictional and is there to represent all her bundled-up memories and feelings of everything she had left behind. An immigrant's story: the price of change...

I am eagerly awaiting a chance to see this movie based on this beautifully written review and your insightful comments!

For "something more" in the way of a love that might have been, you might like The Dead, based on a short story by James Joyce, directed by John Houston and starring Angelica Houston (1987). It is a stunning examination of suppressed feelings in the modest, "lace curtain" middle class of a normally quite repressed Irish society of a century ago. There is a wonderful cameo in it by Donal Donnelly as the poignantly inebreated relative—he did an equally stunning small part as Archbishop Gilday of the Vatican Bank in Godfather III.

[x]

Celine Song’s Transcendent Debut

... so ... not about the theme to Titanic?

[Albion Wilde]

So THAT’S how all those insurance salesmen are finding me!

Ned Ryerson!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHSTc9Ydtds

[Albion Wilde]

Quiet character dramas with stoic, emotionally restrained people who would sooner die than bleed publicly and who treat others with great respect? Movies without villains? Movies in which ordinary people are living the little virtues, sometimes at heroic cost?

Get Low, starring Robert Duvall. Cold Mountain with Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.

[sphinx]

Thanks. Cold Mountain I’ve seen, and liked. I’ll add Get Low to my watchlist.

[sphinx]

Thanks. Cold Mountain I’ve seen, and liked. I’ll add Get Low to my watchlist.

[sphinx]

There’s more than one Celine — never realized that before just now.:)

[TheWriterTX]

Godzilla Minus One is a survival/redemption story.

Godzilla is emblematic of the terrible destruction that struck Japan when they awakened the American beast.

The main character suffers from ostracism, PTSD, and his life is in ruins. The movie is about how he rebuilds his life and gains acceptance and forgiveness from his peers by overcoming his inner demons (while facing the gravest threat of all).

The characters in no way try to paint America as the bad guy. They own their part in WW2 and anger at their leaders is understated but nonetheless present.

The focus is on life in the aftermath of unimaginable destruction and the will to survive.

Because the core story is so compelling, the characters so human and likeable, the judicious use of Godzilla enhances the storyline instead of overpowering it. Of course, fans of the King of all Monsters will be awestruck by his presence on screen and the creators make him truly terrifying.

The background music, a nod to the original score meant to evoke dread, is punctuated by a steady crescendo of strings and made all the more powerful when purposefully silent.

It’s subtitled in English but easy to follow the dialog.

My kids want to see it again.