Review of Past Lives (2023) by Jluis_001 — 29 Jun 2023

Maybe I'm having a different reading of this movie, but, while I liked it quite a bit, it also left me with a lot of doubts and questions.

Past Lives is a good movie, but without wanting to sound like a bitter **** I think it seeks to romanticize a situation that responds more to impulses, desires and longings than true love.

Its whole plot is based on a Korean concept where if you meet someone, even briefly, it means that you also knew them in a past life, and lovers are people who have met again and again in our past lives. It sounds nice, but can something like that justify our actions and our feelings?

Yes, clearly in an idyll of this caliber the story should have a deeper weight than it implies, but I think the message of Past Lives is completely lost in its lack of authenticity.

I firmly believe that everything we do in our lives shapes us. It forges our whole identity, and our relationships with other people, whether loving, sexual or friendly, are part of it all. But what does it all mean, if everything you've built, the life you've established, could be shattered by your childhood sweetheart? Especially when the answer depends entirely on your actions.

Past Lives is the ultimate what if. And that's because even completely fortuitously for her character, the protagonist's husband accepts that he's perhaps the extra person in the equation and basically tells her that if he's in her way, he'll step aside.

Especially since you're conveniently made to know that their marriage was apparently an act of settling and convenience. Is that ideal? I don't know. It's not realistic though.

And this issue becomes aggravated in its conclusion because, obviously, one must ask: what is left? And the answer is dissatisfaction. Both characters will be left with the doubt of what they didn't do or say, and that void will be there forever. Her tears in the stairs are the immediate proof of that.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but I honestly did enjoy this movie. There are a lot of issues to explore, and I love that. Plus, it's a very clean, dialogue-driven movie with solid performances, especially that of Greta Lee, but I can't hide the credibility issues that I had with its plot.