Past Lives (2023): We are moving, moving, moving
Just because there's distance doesn't mean we are distant.
Past Lives is my young adult Disney movie. How do relationships work and look like in times when people move or are displaced? What makes us who we are? Can we talk about love in terms of connections and care? Where can I get decent Korean food where I live? These are some questions that Past Lives made me ponder.
In the movie we see Nora and Hae Sung as childhood friends, and then due to circumstances Nora ends up in New York, while Hae Sung remains in Korea. Time passes, life goes on, they grow up and get jobs, meet other people, and probably develop anxiety or stress in their own ways, they create facebook accounts and look up to each other, and eventually reconnect. They are older now. What follows is one of the most cinematic ways of depicting a long distance connection via Skype calls. They are in different rhythms because of the time zone, which at some point becomes unsustainable: even when you want to stay in contact, the material aspect of our lives makes it difficult. But not only that, when you are longing, you might start to create stories or what ifs in your head. What if you were here? What if I was there?
Nora then meets another guy named Arthur who later becomes her husband. They move in together to save rent because New York. Time passes, life goes on. Nora and Hae Sung reconnect again, this occasion physically, in New York. Nora tells Arthur about his childhood friend. Arthur feels threatened, and he tells her something like “What a good story this is. I just can’t compete” referring to the possibility that the childhood friend could “steal her away”. That would have been the Disney way, or a very basic romcom plot, instead, the subversion here for me was the need for reassurance that Arthur was asking her, a guy! Being needy! We all need reassurance and that was novel for me to see on screen.
Then there’s the sequence when the three of them meet. To me, this is also a revolutionary act of care because most narratives of love are of selfishness and property, in which “all the love” is shared just with one person. On the contrary, Nora loves both Hae Sung and Arthur in different ways. They are significant in her life, and how delightful it was for them to share that, for both of them to get to know Nora, who she was, who she is, and who she is becoming, through the people with whom she has shared her moving in life.
I read an interview with Celine Song in which she mentions the healthy relationship she has with the city of New York “What I love the most about New York is the way that the city loves you, but doesn’t need you.” This movie was the best ad to visit New York I have seen in a while, and a the reminder that just because there’s distance between important people in my life, it doesn’t mean we are distant.