Past Lives

"Na Young" (Moon Seung-ah) and her best pal "Hae Sung" (Leem Seung-min) are pretty much joined at the hip at school. They do everything together. That is, until her family decide that they are going to emigrate to Canada. The young lad is a bit bereft, he doesn't really understand and he certainly doesn't approve! Anyway, off they go and after quite an hiatus, she discovers that he had tried to get in touch previously and so she now gets in contact. Now called "Nora" (and played by Greta Lee), she has married "Arthur" (John Magaro) and moved to NYC, but as they continue to chat online they gradually rebuild their friendship so that a visit from Korea to the USA seems the natural next step. What now ensues are a poignantly constructed series of reminiscences that extol the virtues and innocence of their childhoods but also illustrate how different they have become - even while the underlying bedrock of her relationship with him (and, for that matter with her husband) is probably just as solid - though not in quite the same way. There's a bit of pining, a bit of regret - but the film also fairly optimistically looks at where their lives have got to, and also of where their lives have yet to go. The acting isn't really much to write home about, though Magaro delivers well as the gooseberry. He doesn't speak much Korean and so the chats with their visitor frequently leave him in a sort of nervous, but polite, limbo. There are a few films around just now that focus on reconciliation of those separated by migration when South East Asia was still recovering from post war/French colonial rule - and this one is certainly one of the more interesting and honest. It's not without the odd bit of humour either - and is well worth a gander.