Past Lives

---

A remarkable debut for writer-director Celine Song, Past Lives uses the bonds between its sensitively sketched central characters to support trenchant observations on the human condition.  Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.

Time: 106 min

All proceeds to Neighbour to Neighbour and Hamilton Food Share.

Thanks to our Season Sponsor: Rastin's Wilson Street PharmaChoice Pharmacy

BUY TICKETS HERE: https://www.memorialarts.ca/events?category=Film

Awards

Hollywood Critics Midseason Awards: won Best Indie Film, won Best Actress Greta Lee, won Best Screenplay Celine Song

Reviews

It’s hard to imagine Past Lives not being one of 2023’s most talked-about films, and it richly deserves the honor.  Alissa Wilkinson/Vox

Song’s work here is incredible, as this story of the past and present, and what it means for the future is a carefully handled story told with love and heart. Greta Lee, Yoo Teo, and John Magaro make an incredible trio of performances, each of which hits on a unique and important perspective on this tale, in a film that you won’t want to leave, and will stick with you for long after. Ross Bonaime/Collider

A movie that liberates your tears and makes you fall in love with it. It is almost assuredly predestined to be the single best movie you see this year. David Fear/Rolling Stone

This heart-meltingly romantic and sad movie from Korean-Canadian dramatist and filmmaker Celine Song left me wrung out and empty and weirdly euphoric, as if I’d lived through an 18-month affair in the course of an hour and three-quarters. Peter Bradshaw/The Guardian

The dreamy, deliberate pacing of all of this never feels overlong. Instead, the film gathers you up in its hands and carries you along with it, resulting in what will surely be one of the best films of 2023. Chris Evangelista/Slash Films

The performances are impossibly strong and awards-season ready. Anything other than a best actress Oscar nomination for Lee will be criminal. Kevin Maher/Times (UK)

However you write its title, Past Lives is a great romance, a great coming-of-age story, a great tale about the ways technology can bring people together (but only so far), a great New York City film, a great story about immigrants — and a great movie, period. Matt Singer/ScreenCrush

It’s difficult to convey the multilayered beauty of Past Lives beyond just urging people to see it and lose themselves in its transfixing spell. David Rooney/The Hollywood Reporter

Past Lives is an exquisitely wistful drama that speaks with an honesty so affectingly crisp it will turn your conceptions of love, identity and fate on their head. Carlos Aguilar/TheWrap

A transcendent debut for South Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song, this romantic drama is a masterclass in slow, simmering storytelling. It will stay with you, maybe even into your next life. Nick de Semlyen/Empire

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13238346/

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/past_lives