Past Lives
This is a movie that really strikes at every immigrant who left their country in th4e midst of adolescence. The situations might not be exact (certainly not for me, who attended an all boys school), but the feels, they hit so hard.
This movie really goes for all the cliches, but at the same time, gives you enough to keep on watching. You have the white husband, the asian wife, and the never-was-but-maybe-could-have-been childhood sweetheart. The characters are Korean, but you can easiliy transpose the situation to any immmigrant flavor you want easily enough. The twists here is that the white husband is that’s understanding and cognizant of the situation, the Korean bf-that-never-was is similarly cognizant of the situation and how missed opportunities are just that, missed.
The only one in denial is the girl, who is seemingly caught in a best-of-but-not-really situation, of confronting her past while having to live in the present.
The directoress masterfully creates a dramaedy (or a tragecomiedy) of such poignancy that it matches most of the woe-be-us korean dramas that’s been spawned in the last decade or so, but in a way that’s understandable and universal to the immigrant experience.
I’d say this is highly recommended if you are of that age when you immigrated, or had a loved one that immigrated at that age (12 to 18 or thereabouts), because that’s when life’s possibilities loomed the greatest. And then you realize as the years creep on by, those doors start shutting one by one. Its not a tragedy per se, as some doors close because others opened, but you always look at things like “what if what if what if”.
Durig the movie, I simultaneously threw my hands up at the characters, and the situation presented, and laughed out loud at the way things turned out.
Highly recommended, but only if you’re of the above. Easily the one movie that gave me the most feels.