2024-02-17 07:58:40
PAST LIVES. Nelle sale
What a beautiful example of a romantic comedy, Past Lives: we are moved, we sigh, we listen to the music of love. Generational disorientation appears in the watermark and makes us anxious. We look at ourselves with our faces a bit like this, like poets and lovers look at unpicked roses. Here is the description of an interior sharing created by destiny. A praise of Platonic sentiment, confirming that passion runs strong in suspended moments, in waiting, in getting closer. But it passes through your thoughts like lightning, without respite. An earthquake that has nothing exclusive about it. Solidarity, generous, poignant: a worm that makes you suffer and is reborn, to the point of exhaustion. The model is In The Mood For Love, which Wong Kar-wai launched at Cannes in 2000 and over time became an elegant cult.
Past Lives would like to take a step forward, developing the discussion over a very long period of time. However, it should not be forgotten that this is a first work, which makes the final result even more brilliant. Write down the name of Celine Song, 36 years old, born in South Korea, naturalized Canadian, American by adoption, capable of a small prodigy of cinematic cleanliness, in which the slow rhythm is accompanied by the tenderness of lovers-non-lovers and the signs of sentimental stubbornness. The Oscar nomination for best film is a fitting medal for valor after Past Lives revealed itself at the Sundance Film Festival, produced by A24 and aimed at an audience that loves atmospheres between East and West, well trained by the recent Perfect Days and Trip to Japan.
The opening scene frames three people, two men and a woman, at the counter of a bar: they chat, have an aperitif, touch each other, laugh. One of the two men, white and Western, seems embarrassed by the intimacy between the other two. Who are those people? The solution to the mystery (and the behavior of the trio) arrives late in the film, as we follow the sentimental education of two boys who grew up in a peripheral and not very Western Seoul. Na Hang and Hae Sung have known and liked each other since they were children: schoolmates and best friends, they go home together, sometimes they argue, they make fun of each other, but they love being alone and this seems to say a lot about how the film will develop. Instead, their paths diverge: Na Hang, in the wake of a director father, chooses to leave Korea and emigrate to Toronto, committing herself to studies to become a writer and leaving Hae Sung, who doesn’t find the courage to leave, with an inch of nose.
Ambition and youthful recklessness prevent kids from recognizing the strength of their bond. The two meet again 12 years in 1981, born in Berlin. Na Hang has changed her name and city: now she is Nora, she has moved to New York, she has forgotten the little girl that she was.
Hae Sung is a quiet engineer: he has few ambitions, he doesn’t speak English, he is attached to the traditions of his country. The meeting point is the Internet: the two shyly come into contact via Skype, then the ancient harmony is ignited and still seems to prevail. However, the distance that separates them is too much. Just one misunderstood word or a distraction at work is enough to push them away again. Another 12 years pass in which there isn’t a day when we don’t think about each other. He finally finds the courage to board a plane to America.
Meanwhile, Nora has married a Jewish colleague, Arthur (John Magara), also a writer, who understands the importance of that bond and seeks a solution through dialogue, just as if it were a novel to be written day by day. The three are divided by language but united in a web of hesitations, doubts, second thoughts. Better not to reveal how the story ends: Celine Wong knows how to surprise the viewer by describing with grace, effectiveness and an evident autobiographical flavor the consequences of a deep, volatile, cerebral love, entrusted to silences, gestures, the language of the eyes.
PAST LIVES di Celine Song
(USA, 2023, duration 106′ Lucky Red)
con Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, Shabier Kirchner, John Magaro
Rating: **** out of 5
In the rooms
February 17, 2024 | 08:58
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