| A24 | Release Date: June 2, 2023 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
51
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
The Observer (UK)Sep 10, 2023
There’s something quite breathtaking about the deceptive ease with which Song’s first cinematic foray juggles the metaphysical and the matter-of-fact, conjuring a world in which every decision has transformative power, and concepts of love and friendship are at once mysteriously malleable yet oddly inevitable.
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Jun 6, 2023
The best movies are little worlds that welcome you into the experiences of fascinating characters, giving you everything you need to understand their perspectives and actions. Past Lives does so in spades, painting on a small canvas, but with rich hues of emotion and meaning, knowing that a great story and a great life aren’t necessarily the same thing.
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Jun 2, 2023
Song has crafted a deliriously honest romantic drama that is utterly singular even while it calls to mind everything from Richard Linklater to Wong Kar-wai to David Lean’s Brief Encounter. This is a movie that flows over with patience, forgiveness, and tender wisdom — qualities all the more wondrous for their relative absence from modern society and its movies.
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Jun 2, 2023RogerEbert.comJun 1, 2023
The film explores the tender feelings of relationships at various stages, from budding playground crushes to adulthood’s alleged certainty. It’s the kind of nuanced movie that allows for self-reflection as well as entertainment, following two characters who illustrate how relationships—both fully realized and not—influence our lives.
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ColliderFeb 9, 2023
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.
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IndieWireJan 23, 2023
The absolute immediacy of Lee’s performance allows you to feel every frame of Past Lives on your skin, which is crucial to a film that conveys the brunt of its meaning through sense instead of story; a film that commands its placid rhythms and ethereal fussiness with a confidence that elevates Song’s “people don’t talk like that” dialogue into a decisive plus.
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Jun 15, 2023
Song, a playwright, has fashioned an elegant script and displays a lovely feel for the camera, which unhurriedly finds its way to the places it needs to be. Yet Past Lives packs as much of a wallop as it does because of the intense connection of its leads (never mind that they’re physically disconnected in many of their scenes).
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The GuardianJan 23, 2023
Song is a writer of elegant restraint and as the final act progressed, I worried that perhaps this restraint might end up a little too delicate for the years that have preceded and the feelings that have amassed. But then in a bar scene for the ages, we find ourselves floored, a slow buildup that finally hits like a bus.
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