There's a Korean expression that we'll probably all be talking about soon (or some of us, which shouldn't be exaggerated either): inyeon. "It means providence or destiny. But it's specifically about relationships between people," the protagonist of Past Lives, who was born in Korea but emigrated first to Canada and then to the United States, explains to her American partner. The idea of both the character and, in a hurry, the film itself is to highlight how all human interactions are somehow predestined. Gestures as slight as a polite greeting on a bus may (or may not) lead to relationships as essential as love itself. Be attentive to any contact, no matter how insubstantial and arbitrary it may seem – that would be the moral – because everything has consequences. It is on this concept in the form of an almost McGuffin (a red herring or enigma that distracts the viewer from the main plot so that the surprise effect is more effective), that Celine Song organizes what is her surprising and highly praised debut in cinema after a decade dedicated to theater.

"Actually," the director herself now explains, "everything was born from a very specific moment. Suddenly, I became aware that my life, despite its insignificance among so many others, took on an almost epic dimension." Celine Song doesn't suffer an attack of megalomania, but simply sets out to remember the moment when one fine day she saw herself in a New York bar between her childhood friend (perhaps lover of an existence that did not happen) and her current partner. The first came to visit from the distant past. The second was nothing more than pure present. And she in the middle, trapped in a kind of unresolved time loop, as a translator between a life that didn't become Korean and a life that at that very moment was being in English. That circumstance was the motive for the film, he confesses, and that, consequently, is the first sequence of Past Lives. Is all this inyeon? Maybe. "The truth is that I saw myself as the protagonist of an unconscionable story that spans continents and many decades. And I think if we think about it a little bit, we can all be in a similar situation. All our lives are epic," he says.

Perhaps for this reason, because of the ease with which the film manages between the disproportionate, because it is universal, and the trivial, because it is unique and concrete, the truth is that since its premiere at Sundance at the beginning of the year and its subsequent presentation at the Berlinale, Past Lives has done nothing but gain followers to become one of the favorite films of the season and with an exception in all Oscar predictions. "I'm flattered by what's happened and I'm surprised. I want to believe that success, so to speak, has to do with the claim I attempt at a common experience: how time moves through our lives. We've all been 16 years old, we'll never be 16 again, and yet the person we were when we were 16 is still alive and with us. And that person deserves to be recognized as real. For me, that's the essence of the film," he says.

Indeed, the film, which basically narrates a reunion and how that reunion causes the world to bifurcate into each of the abandoned possibilities (into what could have been and was not), has a lot of recusal of the present. Halfway between a compressed version of Linklater's trilogy Before... and a rereading of Lost in Translation, Past Lives approaches the cinematic experience as an essentially shared exercise and far removed from the solipsistic game of omnipresent screens. "What all these years of theatre have taught me," he reflects, "is the audience's patience for silence. What is relevant is not so much what is said as everything that makes up the story and that, in some way, is also the heritage of the viewers. It doesn't matter the weather, the language... We all love the same. In silence." Perhaps it is that or, why not, the inyeon that summons us to the prodigy of Past Lives.

  • cinema