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Sedgwick Test Only
Celine Song’s remarkable debut is a rare mature adult drama of inexpressible connections and one of the most effective films of the year
There’s a section in Past Lives, Celine Song’s gorgeous, deft debut film about a pair of reconnecting childhood sweethearts, that immediately portaled me to the year 2011.
It was not the fashion, which is vaguely of a time past, nor a character’s old iPhone interface, nor the math provided for the film’s flashbacks, but the particular doo-do-doo of a Skype ringtone on an open laptop, that ersatz sonar of long-distance connection. Nora Moon (Greta Lee, a fascinating mix of sharp and soft) is an aspiring playwright in her early 20s in New York City, and has engaged in a very familiar late 2000s game: searching the names of old connections on Facebook to see what they’re up to now. Who’s successful? Who turned out hot? What traces remain of the person you once knew?
