No Uncle Boonme, No Party "You're talking a lot but you're not saying anything!", says the supremely talented David Byrne in the Talking Heads hit Psycho Killer. Such a statement applies when discussing A24s latest uninspired offering Past Lives. A classic reminder that just because you shoot this all fancy doesn't change the nature of the source material. What is this you ask? This is basically a John Green book. Written quickly and lashed on to the shelves every summer for a white girl to pick up in WH Smiths before her big beach holiday. Something low stakes and easy going that can be read by the pool in between beverages. Please don't see that as an attack on that market. Had this movie have played out in the manner fitting to its classmates, I'd have probably respected it more. There is simply no need for all these pretentions. Call up Julia Roberts, Emma Roberts or whoever the fuck, let's get the wine in and have a good time. What we don't got to do is pretend we're something we're not. Past Lives announces the arrival of yet another fraud in new comer Celine Song. The next in line to spoon feed cheap Asianness for all the American fetishists out there and reap the rewards. Have we learnt nothing from hacks like Chloe Zhao? But oh how we must praise this as we go one ladder up from orientalism. This bandying around movies based on false progressiveness over quality is a sickness. Streaming services getting out their support cards out and having entire sections dedicated to themes such as "Black History Month" only irritate me personally. Are you going to tell me that movies such as Black and Blue and 42 represent the peak of black artistry? Either put in the work and find the talent or don't bother because quite frankly its embarrassing and a complete mockery to these cultures. Luckily, Past Lives is nowhere near as disgusting in content and as incompetent as John M. Chu's Crazy Rich Asian's but to call it a pleasant experience would be far from the truth.
As a young cinephile, Korean cinema really opened up to me towards the end of the 2000s with the explosion of their twisted revenge thrillers, psychotic horrors and violent crime movies from the likes of Bong Joon Ho, Park Chan Wook, Kim Jee Woon, Na Hong-Jin and Park Hoon-Jung. After completing the catalogues of Scorsese and Tarantino it seemed the next logical step and finding such depraved titles was easy as it was all delivered to us neatly under the banner of 'Asia Extreme' from the Tartan film distribution company. A potentially controversial form of marketing with its exploitation of Asian weirdness. Truth is though, without it we wouldn't have been exposed to such great movies. Naturally, it makes sense for us to now turn to exploring what female Korean directors have to offer. All part of A24s continued youthful hip appeal. Honestly, I'd be struggling to name talented female Korean directors. This is not even a question of tastes but an acceptance that in our present time they are yet to really emerge and explode in the west like the boys before them. It's only been in the last 20 years they did that too, we need to accept these things take time. Therefore, what we should be doing is tackling this issue by supporting their industry further to create greater opportunities for female filmmakers there. Promotion in the manufacture. The problem lies in when this strategy soon becomes let's celebrate the perceived progressive conditions of the films over the actual quality. I stand by: if we're not there yet, we're not there yet. So Let's not kid ourselves.
Past Lives is another shallow attempt from A24 at relevancy by picking at easy targets to win over the kids by tugging on heart strings and false progressivism. They're going down the drain rapidly. They've changed their strategy from weirdness for weird sake and not even that weird for a completely routine romance. Men and The Whale were dog shit too but at least they were amusingly awful in their desperate strains at success. Whereas, Past Lives is simply bland.
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