Oscars.watch

Reviews

Stephanie Zacharek, Time:

Is it normal to wonder what might have been—to ponder what your life might be like if you’d chosen another partner—or is it a betrayal of the person who sleeps beside you every night?

Shirley Li, The Atlantic:

[Director Celine] Song’s sweeping romance, Past Lives, spans decades and crosses continents as it depicts a woman reconnecting with her childhood sweetheart, but it deploys a delicate rhythm of absence, distance, and silence.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair:

It is a very tough thing indeed to make a film that is at once restrained and brimming with feeling.

David Ehrlich, IndieWire:

it’s a movie less interested in tempting its heroine with “the one who got away” than it is in allowing her to reconcile with the version of herself he kept as a souvenir when she left.

Donald Clarke, The Irish Times:

Shooting on 35mm film, Shabier Kirchner, who did such good work on Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, finds a luscious, fluid New York to compare favourably with different beauties in Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Nick de Semlyan, Empire:

This is Greta Lee’s show: she’s magnificent in the role, by turns steely, fearful, yearning and impish.

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune:

For some, the lack of melodrama or fireworks may prove an emotional deterrent in Past Lives. For others, including me, the right movie makes you care and believe. And this is one of them.