On summer nights, when the heat still lingers in the streets and I can’t sleep, I head to the cinema. It doesn’t matter what’s playing, because for me, the best way to follow up a day at the swimming pool is to descend into a dark movie theater and head into another world. But when I want to be sure that the show will reliably take me somewhere new, I buy a ticket for the In the Mood series at Neues Off. Every second Tuesday, films by East Asian directors are screened in their original versions. In addition to classics by Wong Kar-Wai, whose beautiful love film “In the Mood for Love” lends its name to the series, there are screenings of new titles. Besides screenings of “Burning,” Lee Chang-dong’s adaptation of a short story by cult Japanese author Haruki Murakami, you should mark your calendars for “Past Lives” in August. The feature debut by Korean-born playwright Celine Song, the film follows a boy and girl who grow up in Seoul, become friends and fall in love – until the girl moves to Toronto with her family. After years of radio silence, the two meet again in New York in their mid-thirties.
In the film, Song interweaves her own migration experience with the Korean concept of in-yun: the idea that people who were connected in a past life find each other again. Past Lives is a quiet film that conveys the notion of missed love without cheesiness or clichés. The dialogue is clever and honest, and Greta Lee – known from the series “Russian Doll” – is impressive in her first leading role. You could watch her all day as she sits between her husband and her childhood sweetheart, pondering “what-ifs.” In her narrative, Celine Song demonstrates what “in the mood” has at its core: an attempt to find that which connects worlds and determines fate while respecting cultural subtleties. The line-up features some of the most beautiful non-love films of the year. But there’s no doubt that it is a declaration of love for cinema.
Text: Laura Storfner / Credit: Past Lives & Yorck
In the mood at Neues Off, Hermannstr.20, 12049 Berlin–Neukölln; map
Every other Tuesday at 21h.
Burning 20.06.2023
Past Lives 01.08.2023
@inthemood.berlin
