"Past Lives"

    ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Past Lives is the first great movie of 2023, a film of enormous ambition and epic, sweeping scope that is determined to remain grounded. Writer-director Celine Song is taking on nothing less than an entire philosophical conceit, but narrowing it to one small, specific story. Its characters continually insist they are ordinary and nothing special, but this extraordinary film is special, indeed.

Its story is one we've seen countless times: Two characters in love are separated, only to reunite decades later. On the surface, Past Lives tells its story in a quiet, straightforward way—so quiet that its deliberate pacing once or twice threatens to backfire, though never does. The characters here are Nora and Hae Sung, who meet as children in South Korea, just before her parents emigrate to Canada. Twenty-four years later, Nora (Greta Lee) is married to Arthur (John Magaro) and living in New York, when Hae Sung (Teo Woo) comes to visit, a situation as emotionally fraught as it is beautiful.

Woven throughout, with breathtaking style, is a Korean philosophy of "in yun," a long-haul destiny that explains but does not determine why two people might meet. Nora and Hae Sung have maintained their relationship in on-and-off, long-distance style for decades, and it's nothing her husband doesn't know about. "The guy flew 13 hours on a plane to see you, I'm not going to tell you not to see him," he reasons. Yet there's something much deeper, something both he and we sense, even while Nora and Arthur have a strong, committed marriage. It's a film that breathes a sense of magic: The Way We Were crossed with Lost in Translation — with the mildest hint of some of the loveliest ideas from Everything Everywhere All at Once. Past Lives builds to long and exquisitely unpredictable closing scene, one as wondrous and remarkable as everything else in this small bit of cinematic beauty.

Viewed May 10, 2023 — AMC Burbank 6

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"You Hurt My Feelings"

   ☆☆☆☆½ 

Nicole Holofcener's You Hurt My Feelings begins with simple white titles on a black screen that quickly cut to an elite, golden-hued New York City, and movie fans who grew up watching Woody Allen's witty, erudite comedies of the 1970s and 1980s will recognize both the place and the tone immediately. Holofcener's film is a spiritual twin to those movies, only slightly less anxious and barely less specific. Yet, You Hurt My Feelings stirs an entirely different sort of feelings than, say, Hannah and Her Sisters or Annie Hall, which is a relief and a surprise.

The film centers on Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a doubt-laden memoir writer who is moving into fiction without much success. Her therapist husband Don (Tobias Menzies) is, theoretically, at least, steeped in empathy—but what happens when a therapist goes through a midlife crisis? Beth's sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Mark (Arian Moyaed) are facing their own uncertainties of self, so they're of little help when Beth overhears Don being both honest and less than kind when discussing her new book.

With such a narrow focus on a seemingly tiny problem faced by an affluent woman who wants for nothing in her life, You Hurt My Feelings would seem to have little to offer except some brilliant performances. Yet, this small film and its highly specific target winds up doing something unexpected and glorious: Without ever losing its sight on Beth and her circumstance, You Hurt My Feelings reassures viewers, with humor and empathy, that their own feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty are entirely normal. A hair over 90 minutes, You Hurt My Feelings isn't much longer than a therapy session—but it's infinitely cheaper, and maybe just as effective. With disarming humor (a small dinner-party scene has a few of the biggest laughs in recent memory, Holofcener's film takes something we are sure we've seen before and turns it into something entirely new—and entirely winning.

Viewed June 2, 2023 — AMC Century City

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