Past Lives – Nos vies d’avant

Bien que les premières réactions festivalières aient porté Past Lives aux nues, cet emportement est un tantinet exagéré et le film a certainement ses quelques passages à vide. Cela dit, il s'agit d'un drame relationnel très bien écrit, lequel se distingue par sa fraîcheur et son authenticité. Et l'utilisation des extérieurs n'y est pas pour rien ; ça faisait longtemps que nous n'avions pas eu droit à un film qui exploitait aussi bien les décors et les monuments de New York dans des perspectives civiles et romantiques. Est-ce donc si difficile ? [KVIFF 2023] (30/08/2023)

« Quand on abandonne quelque chose, on gagne quelque chose d’autre. » Subtil, avec d’excellents dialogues, et déchirant à la fin. Émotionnellement proche de Lost in Translation, mais sans protagonistes aussi originaux et aussi judicieusement choisis. Un très beau film. (03/07/2023)

Un doux drame romantique qui raconte l'histoire de deux individus clairement destinés l'un à l'autre, mais dont le destin ne veut pas que leurs chemins se croisent dans la vie. Cette histoire se déroule sur trois décennies, avec trois grands sauts dans le temps, et se concentre sur un trio de personnages liés par le thème de la destinée et de la connexion millénaire de leurs âmes. Cette histoire intemporelle mélange douceur et amertume, et puise dans les souvenirs d'amours passés, de situations relationnelles douloureuses vécues et dans l'alchimie entre les acteurs, qui créent des étincelles sans même prononcer un mot. Le début peut sembler un peu précipité, mais avec l'entrée des personnages dans l'âge adulte, l'histoire mûrit et se concentre sur l'essentiel. Parfois, la force et la beauté se cachent vraiment dans la simplicité, particulièrement lorsque cette simplicité est mise en valeur par une réalisation précise et économe et des dialogues intelligents et conscients. (03/07/2023)

There’s nothing like going into a film with high expectations and having them effortlessly met. Past Lives is a subtle romantic drama that thrives on its simplicity, avoiding Hollywood's typical tricks and gimmicks to enhance an already captivating story. It simply and beautifully tells the tale of two people who found each other in childhood, only to be separated and have their shared happiness turn into longing. Their lives unfold and evolve in completely different environments on opposite sides of the globe. The narrative is natural, straightforward, and melancholic, free of embellishments, but filled with genuine emotions that had me in tears by the final moment. (03/07/2023)

Watching Past Lives is like staying in a meticulously tidy, clinically clean apartment in which one never begins to feel at home. It’s a film that lets you know exactly where it wants to take you emotionally, and its strategy – from the music to the shooting – is so clear and seamless that I couldn’t get into the game that it plays. Part of the problem is that Celine Song leaves the most dramatically satisfying content until the last third, so everything that comes before it is just a neat overture. The improbable love triangle in Past Lives is thus rather more sweetly illustrative instead of cutting to the marrow. Sure, a New York romance with a Korean twist is appealing. I understand the hype, but this film fades away too quickly in this lifetime, let alone the past ones. Return to Seoul, which has a similar concept, appealed to me more. (03/07/2023)

Shabier Kirchner's engrossing camera work gracefully takes in Asia, New York, and a cottage in Montauk, but I was really only drawn to those places – not to the script, even for a moment. I like stories about sensible young couples with hellishly imperfect timing, but I've seen a few of those already. That's why comparisons to, say, Richard Linklater's films strike me as a joke and a determined effort to fit into a subgenre. I've seen couples in live-action and animated form that grabbed my heart in a minute more intensely than Nora and Hae-Sung managed in the sum total of all the footage. Past Lives gets everything right on paper, but nothing more that that jumps out at you other than a story exercise executed to a tee. Besides, of the characters, "the third wheel" is the one who wins me over with ease, which probably isn't right either. Unlike the endless and repeated silence and indecision of the central duo, at least he brings self-reflection and a decent amount of determination to the situation. (10/03/2024)

The film is excellently shot and I only have small objections to the individual durations of certain scenes. The main actors are also good and there is chemistry between them, but what brings the film down for me is that it is filmed too realistically. This is how the story would actually happen. It is so real. The problem is that this simply does not work on the movie screen. Unadorned reality is suitable for a documentary, not for a romantic drama that is also predictable from beginning to end and lacks any surprising moment, twist, or deviation. The film becomes very slow and boring after the halfway point because it follows its own tracks, very slow tracks with a lagging pace. (16/08/2023)