Past Lives Review: Celine Song’s Exquisite Debut Feature is What Grown Ups Have Been Missing at the Multiplex

Going to the movies right now feels like huffing exhaust. The fumes of tired franchises, hyperfrenetic filmmaking, and cheap sludgy visual effects choke multiplexes and streaming services, strangling creativity and our own good judgment.

But there are still rare clearings in the miasma, when a film can be a cleansing blast of the cleanest oxygen that reminds us why we love cinema in the first place —and what we could have if only we made different choices.

Past Lives, writer-director Celine Song’s debut feature, is that kind of work. A wise and exquisite film shot through with bold chances and achingly authentic performances, it’s a slow burn that begins with a deceptively simple foundation before crescendoing in an emotional wallop.

Twenty-four years after Nora (Greta Lee) emigrated from South Korea with her family, she reunites in New York with childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), both confronting what might have been, could be, and never will. If that sounds ho-hum it’s because, broadly speaking, we’ve seen this kind of story before — a reliable old saw storytellers have taken in countless directions.

But in Song’s hands, it feels fresh and alive, an unpretentious grappling with fate, regret, and the waves churned up by our choices. Song builds Past Lives around three key moments in Nora and Hae Sung’s story. The first, set in Seoul 24 years ago, establishes the relationship between the then-12-year-olds just as Nora (whose name in South Korea is Na Young) and her family leave for Canada. The second jumps ahead 12 years, to when Nora is a hopeful playwright in New York, Hae Sung is an engineering student in Seoul and the two find each other thanks to Facebook and Skype (and Hae Sung’s dogged determination).

(It’s worth mentioning that in the second chapter, set in 2011-12, Song tells Nora and Hae Sung’s reconnection entirely through glitchy Skype conversations. They never occupy the same physical space, and that Song gets so much emotional traction out of what we’ve been conditioned to believe is an impersonal,

by Dante A. Ciampaglia

almost dehumanizing form of communication is a testament to her skills as a filmmaker and storyteller. It’s also the first great depiction of that time in our digital lives, which isn’t something I expected to find in this kind of film.)

The final act jumps another 12 years to the present, when Nora and Hae Sung finally reconnect when he visits Nora — who is now married to Arthur (John Magaro) — in New York. Each chapter builds on and reverberates against the other, subtly setting us up for its quietly shattering final moments.

This is only achieved because Lee and Yoo are so good here, both individually and together. They not only have to carry these characters over the expanse of time and memory, they are routinely required to run an emotional gamut within a single shot. And not all these kinds of performances out. Indeed, with a single exception, Past Lives is a monument to her confidence — and quiet audacity — as a filmmaker. (The film opens with this strange eavesdropping framing device that never appears again and is never developed. It’s the only time you sense this is the work of a rookie feature director.) The simple maturity of the pacing and script are evidence of her command of craft. But just to prove how good she is, there are numerous shots in the film that run, uncut, for a minute or more: Nora and Hae Sung discussing their lives on the steps of Jane’s Carousel, in Brooklyn, or facing each other silently, deeply, in front of a blue garage door on the Lower East Side; Hae Sung and Arthur, sitting together at a cocktail bar, separated by an empty seat, where Nora had been, a chasm of language barriers and unease about each other’s place in Nora’s life. of it is interior. In the last chapter, Nora is as loose and breezy as Hae Sung is uptight and constricted; she flows through the frame like the breeze, and he occupies space (and clothes) as if it has him compressed like a vice. By the final moments, as they make peace with the past, she becomes a bit stiffer and he more fluid — two halves, so long missing, reintegrated, assuming aspects of the other and becoming more dynamic.

Song’s script does a lot of the heavy lifting on that score, but Lee and Yoo are ultimately the ones who get us fully invested in Nora and Hae Sung. When Hae Sung tells Nora that, for him, “you are someone who leaves” but to Arthur “you are someone who stays,” it hits with a force that only comes from feeling total empathy with these people. It’s impossible to imagine Past Lives with anyone else in the roles. That, of course, is thanks to Song’s ability to draw been making some of the old titles, originally released on CD-R, available on vinyl. That label is also issuing their new First Aid Kit (LP and download June 9), an immensely and immediately likeable record and not a bad place to start delving into their unusual songmaking—endearingly enigmatic as ever, in their own, particular way. “1,000 Times” (“I think about you at least 1,000 times a day / I can’t get you off of my mind / what’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong with me?”) is every bit as catchy as that one 4 Non Blondes song, whatever you think of it, and not entirely dissimilar. It’s like a musical glue-trap but there’s always something gurgling underneath.

These aren’t the showy one-shot spectacles of an Alfonso Cuarón film, nor do they wallow in the artifice to create discomfort or unease. They’re more like contemporary updates to Ozu and Wong Kar-wai, extended beats of catharsis and communion that come as conversational and relational capstones. The characters don’t want the moments to end, and we don’t, either. (Cinematographer’s Shabier Kirchner’s gorgeous work in these long takes — indeed, the whole film — certainly helps.)

I didn’t, at least. After watching sequel after sequel and franchise flick after franchise flick, all cut like coked-up music videos, my eyes and brain unable to focus on any one thing in a frame overstuffed with digital monstrosities for more than two seconds, it was luxurious to settle in with a quiet, rich, and assured piece of cinema. There are no fireworks in Past Lives, nor, for that matter, villains. It’s the exceedingly rare grown-up movie for grownups who live grownup lives of hopes, anxieties, and compromises. Song grapples with big ideas: why we are who we are, what we want out of life, who we want to spend our lives with. That kind of quiet profundity puts it at odds with where mainstream studio filmmaking is right now. But it makes it the perfect film for our post-pandemic moment. Its questions are ours — and we could use all the help we can get in finding answers.

Seeing Past Lives in a real-deal movie theater with a crowd of friends and strangers is as good a place as any to begin the journey. Past Lives is now playing in theaters across the city.

Cruel to be Khanate. The biggest news of last month, perhaps tied with Tina Turner and the debt ceiling, was the first new album by “drone doom supergroup” (so says Wikipedia) Khanate in 14 years. To Be Cruel popped up without prophecy on streaming sites on May 19, with a CD and the usual assortment of buy-me-please limitededition vinyl designs coming from Sacred Bones on June 30. The digital release is three tracks, each about the length of an LP side, suggesting that either a fourth will come with the double vinyl or it’ll be a Rahsaan Roland Kirk three-sided dream. But dispense with the consumer baiting, it can be streamed and downloaded now and it’s gloriously crushing. All four original members are present and accounted for: vocalist Alan Dubin (primarily of OLD); guitarists James Plotkin (Phantomsmasher and countless epochal production efforts) and Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O))) and myriad other implementations); and drummer Tim Wyskida (Khlyst and latter day Blind Idiot God). The band doesn’t just toss out genre, they create horrifying scenarios with well-crafted, artisan art metal. “It Wants to Fly” sets a scene of terror with thick, slow, visceral guitar and Dubin’s starkly discernible lyrics. (“I’m going to take you apart / It’s alright, you can look away / Your body is alive / I can see the skin crawl / Look if you want to / You can look if you want”—needless to say it goes on from there.) The partially whispered title track is another horror. Their four previous albums have also been released for streaming and download for the first time with physical formats expected in the near future. It’s a drudge worth taking.

Spanish bombs. A more melodic doom, by way of Sevilla, can be found in the five-piece Pylar, featuring guitarist Bar-Gal (aka Ricardo Jiminez Gómez of the excellent Orthodox, whose 2022 album Proceed is well worth seeking out) and keyboards and French horn, violin, mandolin, hurdygurdy and modular synth all in the mix.

Límyte (CD, LP, download out June 23 from Cavsas/Cyclic Law) is the band’s seventh studio album and the third part of a trilogy they began in 2019. “Límite,” the long first track, comes off something like a heavier, dirtier, Dirty Three. The closer, “Ruptura-afuera,” is a nervous sleepwalk through simple riffage. Between the two is a brief, psychedelic ritual titled “Aniquilación,” but strange proceedings are buried throughout the sludge. Where Khanate is in your face, and readying to peel your skin, Pylar is a threat on the horizon, but not one to be ignored.

“Never Ending Nightmare” also sticks to the ear with bubbly bass and synth masking the tension in the words.

Daughter Quinnisa Rose Kinsella Mulkerin was entering her teen years (and marking a decade appearing on record) during the lockdown recordings, and First Aid Kit puts the women out front. Father Caleb doesn’t sing but with his smart production, the mix is

Thicker than water. The recordings of South Portland’s Big Blood have always struck me as music for the weirdest campfire ever. That might be me projecting a fantasy onto their Maine home base (I’ve been to Maine twice, had fun both times, don’t recall any fires), but their music strikes me as somehow distant but intimate. It might have something to do with a couple making music together in their home for a very long time, going back to the mid ’90s, when they were part of the freak folk collective Cerebus Shoals.

In the years since Shoals disbanded, Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin have put out a couple dozen and then some albums, mostly recorded at home and self-released, while raising a daughter who would become a band member. Most of their records are available free or by donation through the Free Music Archive and their Bandcamp page, and the Massachusetts-based Feeding Tube Records has big and bright enough to swim in. The album closes with the down empo “Weird Road, Pt. 1,” following in reverse gear Part 2 on 2019’s Weird Road EP. It’s a long, less traveled and, yes, weird road they’ve been on these last 17 years, and not about the destination.

Pure pop punk for now gorgeous mothers. The second album by NYC duo Gorgeous arrives June 2 (CD, cassette, download from Cactus Records) and it’s deliciously odd, landing in my ears somewhere between Deerhoof and the marvelous Birthday Ass, who are well overdue for a second record themselves. (Oh, Birthday Ass, where are you?) Sapsucker is tauter, but still as frenetic as their 2019 debut Egg, with catchier songs and brighter production. The songs wobble around with a wonderful disjointedness, only sometimes anchored by Judd Apperman’s ADHD drumming. Dana Lipperman plays layered guitar lines while singing obtuse lyrics of everyday discontent. “Traffic director / Hannibal Lecter / Nobody asked him to step in / Hands got bigger and bigger / Everywhere and nowhere at all / Tumescent or tumorous / His hands grew voluminous / Hands got bigger and bigger,” she laments on “Big Hands,” one of the catchier tracks in the album’s fast-paced half hour. There a manic energy to their songs that rewards repeat listens. Gorgeous isn’t only skin deep. Meanwhile, a decade since their first release, Motherhood is issuing a two-track digital single (June 24, from Forward Music Group), following a full-length this time last year. The New Brunswick trio apparently affectionately known as “Mum” has a lot of story to their songs, helpfully explained in their press release since I’d never have picked up on it otherwise. What I pick up on is something that seems in-you-face gregarious, with a lot of energy and musicality. “Dry Heave” is a screamer with a detective theme interlude. “Wandering” is a bit softer with vocal harmonies and bouncing organ. The video has a cartoon dog. Understanding things is overrated.