Producers: David Hinojosa, Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler   Director: Celine Song    Screenplay: Celine Song   Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Seung Ah Moon, Seung Min Yim, Ji Hye Yoon, Won Young Choi, Min Young Ahn, Yeon Woo Seo, Kiha Chang, Hee Chul Shin, Jun Hyuk Park, Jonica T. Gibbs, Emily Cass McDonnell, Federico Rodriguez, Conrad Schott and Kristen Sieh    Distributor: A24  

Grade:  B+

At a time when movies are oversaturated with notions of multiple lives, multiple worlds and multiple universes, with results that are usually chaotic and mindlessly convoluted, playwright-turned-filmmaker Celine Song finds a way to treat such concepts in a way that’s direct, deeply personal and emotionally piercing.

“Past Lives” takes the Korean idea of “In-Yun,” which involves the chance, or fateful, encounters that occur between two people over the course of their lives (or series of lives), and applies it to what amounts to a romantic triangle that remains poised between unresolved longing and what might have been—and what might be in the future.  It’s a film about multiple possibilities made not for the adolescent superhero fan but for adults old enough to meditate on the choices they could have made but didn’t and the outcome of those they did.  And it casts a “Brief Encounter”-like spell even if you dismiss In-Yun, as a character in the film herself does at one point, as fanciful.

The film begins at a New York City bar.  Three people—a thirty-something Korean woman (Greta Lee), a Korean man (Teo Yoo) of similar age and a Caucasian man (John Magaro) are sitting with their drinks across from unseen observers, who speculate in voiceover about their relationships based on body language.  The Koreans are facing one another and conversing, the Caucasian brooding a bit, the odd man out.  By the time the scene recurs toward the film’s end, the questions posed by the unidentified watchers—the audience, really—will be answered.

The answer comes in what are in effect three acts.  The first, set in Seoul twenty-four years earlier, introduces twelve-year old classmates Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) and Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) walking home from school.  Hae Sung has just bested Na Young in a class competition, and the girl is taking the loss hard, to Hae Sung’s distress. 

Their mood is much more upbeat on a playdate Na Young’s mother (Ji Hye Yoon) has arranged for them with Hae Sung’s (Min Young Ahn).  As the kids gambol about in a park, Hae Sung’s mother observes how happy they are, and speculates they might get married.  But Na Young’s discloses that her husband (Choi Won-Young) is taking the family to Canada, and that the playdate is intended to leave her daughter with pleasant memories of her homeland.  On the way home, Na Young falls asleep on Hae Sung’s shoulder, the boy obviously sadder about her departure than she is.

Twelve years later, Na Young, now going by Nora (Lee), has moved to New York City, where she is finishing her degree.  Out of curiosity she begins to search the Internet for her childhood friend, only to discover he’s been looking for her as well.  They connect, and begin conversing in regular Skype sessions.  Hae Sung (Yoo) is studying engineering, and planning to go to China for further training.  Na Young, meanwhile, has landed a spot at a writer’s retreat in Montauk.  Fearing that they might be growing too close, she suggests that they end their long-distance chats for a while, and Hae Sung agrees, though the buddies he drinks with at night note that he seems depressed.  Meanwhile Nora, reaching Montauk, makes the acquaintance of Arthur (Magaro) another young writer-in-residence.

Twelve more years pass, and Nora has been married to Arthur, a successful novelist, for the last seven of them.  She’s surprised to get a message from Hae Sung, now an engineer, saying that he’s coming to New York on vacation and would like to get together.  Their initial meeting is stiff, but grows looser as they walk and talk.  Meanwhile Arthur acts as nonchalant as he can about Hae Sung’s presence, but is inevitably a bit nonplussed by the reappearance of an old friend of his wife’s who can’t help but reawaken thoughts of Korea in her.

One can imagine the direction in which a formulaic Hollywood script might take this situation.  Song defies expectations with a last act that treats all three lead characters with sensitivity and depth.  That might be presumed in the case of Nora and Hae Sung, whom Lee and Yoo embody with extraordinary restraint and inner life, but it’s more surprising in Arthur.  At first you might be ready to dismiss the fellow—who plays video games and whose novel is titled “Boner”—as the sort of immature guy who could explode in a jealous rage; but as portrayed by Magaro, he’s a thoughtful husband who harbors some concern about what might transpire but realizes how important it is for Nora to reconnect with her past, and actually encourages her to do so.  Even more remarkable is the curious bond Arthur develops with Hae Sung in their own brief encounters.  The triangle the unseen observers comment upon in the opening scene is indeed a triangle, but an unexpectedly lovely one.

Song and her collaborators—production designer Grace Yun, cinematographer Shabier Kirchner and editor Keith Fraase—present this tale of personal choices, losses and hopes in a naturalistic style, and at a lapidary pace that never presses; indeed, some might find it dilatory.  (The score by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen is similarly understated.)

But the approach allows the characters to express themselves as much, indeed even more, through quiet, halting gestures as through words. And an attentive viewer will be touched by what they convey.  Unlike the typical Hollywood blockbuster, “Past Lives” doesn’t evaporate with the final credits.  It leaves you with something to remember and think about.        

Producers: Éric Altmayer and Nicolas Altmayer   Director: François Ozon   Screenplay: François Ozon  Cast: Sophie Marceau, André Dussollier, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling, Éric Caravaca, Hanna Schygulla, Grégory Gadebois, Jacques Nolot, Judith Magre, Daniel Mesguich, Annie Mercier, François Perache, Quentin Redt-Zimmer and Nathalie Richard   Distributor: Cohen Media Group

Grade: B+

In his most recent work, writer-director François Ozon has shown himself once more not just a prolific filmmaker, but one capable of handling remarkably diverse material with enormous skill.  In 2019 he made “By the Grace of God,” a powerful, sober fact-based study of a pedophilia scandal in the French church.  Two years later he offered “Summer of 85,” a gay coming-of-age tale that audaciously mingled tragedy and farce, reminiscent of his more extravagant earlier work.  He returns now with a film in the style of “Grace,” a subtle, nuanced, utterly non-exploitative drama about the right to die, based on the 2014 memoir by novelist Emmanuèle Bernheim, who collaborated with him on the screenplays for two of his best films, “Under the Sand” (2000) and “Swimming Pool” (2003).

The film begins with novelist Emmanuèle (Sophie Marceau) receiving a call from her sister Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas), a musician, informing her that their eighty-four year old father André (André Dussollier) is in the hospital, having suffered a severe stroke.  She rushes to his bedside, finding him partially paralyzed but still as strong-willed and irritable as ever, contemptuously dismissing Robert (Jacques Nolot), a roommate recovering from a stroke himself, who attempts to offer words of comfort.

André slowly begins to recover, but he asks Emmanuèle, the child whom, as flashbacks indicate, he favored but treated so badly she wished for his death, to help him “end it.”  While a doctor blithely remarks that such a request usually is forgotten as a patient improves, Emmanuèle and Pascale know better, and eventually, since euthanasia is illegal in France, Emmanuèle contacts a Swiss organization that assists in what amounts to assisted suicide and confers with its representative (Hanna Schygulla) to make the necessary arrangements.  She will also talk with the family attorney (Daniel Mesguich) to ensure that all state requirements are observed to prevent any future legal problems.  Her husband Serge (Éric Caravaca), a film scholar, can’t entirely comprehend his wife’s deference to her father’s wishes—she merely observes to her doctor that they can deny André nothing—but is quietly, if nervously, supportive. 

Ozon and his crew—production designer Emmanuelle Duplay, costumer Ursula Paredes, cinematographer Hichame Alaouie and editor Laure Gardette—lay all this out elegantly and economically, not ignoring the emotional undercurrents, like the strains between Emmanuèle and Patrice over their childhood experiences or the moments when Emmanuèle escapes to a restroom to weep undetected or nurses a drink at a bar, but playing them with restraint.

The same can be said of the daughters’ approach to their mother Claude (Charlotte Rampling), a sculptress long estranged from André. She’s suffering from Parkinson’s and merely remarks grimly that he doesn’t look so bad on her sole hospital visit before brusquely ordering her nurse to help her out of the room.  André describes Claude as having a heart as cold as the cement she worked with, and one of the occasions on which he becomes exercised is when he discusses where he’ll be buried—not beside her, he insists, since that would place him near his “horrible” in-laws.

The reason behind André and Claude’s hostility is revealed in the appearance of Gérard (Grégory Gadebois), André’s gruff ex-lover, who, among other things, insists that André had promised him his watch.  The sisters despise the fellow, but eventually he does manage to see their father and get what he thinks is his due.  Among other visitors is André’s elderly cousin Simone (Judith Magre), who flies in from America to remonstrate with him over his choice to end his life, arguing that it will be an insult to the relatives who died during the Holocaust.

But nothing will deter André from his decision, though he will postpone the deed until after he can attend his grandson’s (Quentin Redt-Zimmer) clarinet recital.  He also wants to have a final dinner at his favorite restaurant, Voltaire, where he indulges in chocolate mousse and asks his long-time waiter to bring him a bottle of “my Bordeaux.”

A bit of drama arises at the close, when a tip to the police about the reason for André’s planned trip to Switzerland leads to questioning by a businesslike captain (Nathalie Richard) and the ambulance drivers (Aymen Saïdi and Toudo Cissokho) balk at continuing the journey when they find out what André intends to do at their destination, but the problems are resolved with a minimum of fuss; and here, as elsewhere, Ozon adds a few drily humorous touches that lighten further what most other filmmakers would have been inclined to treat as highly-charged melodrama.  He also uses one to emphasize how things differ for people of lesser means; when André expresses surprise at the high cost of the process and wonders how poor folk handle it, Emmanuèle replies simply, “They wait to die.”

The film is anchored by the superbly gauged performances of Marceau and Dussollier, she playing a woman attempting to appear stoic in the face of what her father, who at one point calls her his favorite son, expects her to do (and energetically exercising, a testament to her own determination to fend off aging) and he a man used to getting his way to the very end.  But the entire cast is splendid, down to the smallest roles, with Pailhas’ ambivalence, Rampling’s implacability and Schygulla’s serenity standing out among the ensemble.

That’s a tribute to Ozon’s control of material that could easily have veered into maudlin hand-wringing but in his hands remains resolutely calm and discreet.  That doesn’t mean that “Everything Went Fine” isn’t emotionally rich.  It merely means that the filmmaker, like the characters he’s depicting onscreen, holds the emotion in check, which in reality makes it all the more powerful.  The result is a perceptive and quietly moving examination of a choice that some desire and others deplore.