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Past Lives (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Past Lives (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureSeptember 1, 2023

Why you need to see Past Lives

Past Lives (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Past Lives (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

One of the standouts from this year’s film festival is coming to cinemas. It’s a must-see, writes Chris Schulz, but beware – it’ll tear your heart in three.

This is an excerpt from The Spinoff’s weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here.

A month has passed since I saw Past Lives. That means it’s been a full four weeks since my life was changed – possibly for good? This film has sat with me, churning away in my stomach, pulling at my heart, rearranging my soul. Moments keep coming back to me, hitting my brain like a shockwave. Past Lives is not an easy watch. It is brutal: it will tease you, taunt you, make you question your own past and the things you’ve chosen to bring with you into the present.

I’m not sure if I’m making any sense, but if you take one thing away it’s this: if you choose to see Past Lives, Celine Song’s debut feature that had its New Zealand debut at the International Film Festival last month and gets a limited run in Aotearoa theatres this weekend, it’s going to stay with you. That much is certain. You do not have a choice in the matter.

Past Lives is a tender, intimate story about two childhood friends told across three decades. We meet them first as school kids, then as twenty-something singles, and again in their 30s. It’s not a film full of big reveals or “gotcha” moments. There is little physical contact between the two. At one point, while catching up over a Skype call using dodgy mid-2000s internet, the glitches mirror their relationship: stuttering, full of pauses, fading in and out, always threatening to disconnect completely.

That lack of touch is what makes the tension so palpable. When they’re together, Nora (played by Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) have as much chemistry as any couple has ever had on screen. It’s in the way they look at each other. Her: playful, cheeky, questioning. Him: intense, deep, like his whole life depends on what she says next. It’s in the smiles, the laughs, they way they flirt around, but never directly at, each other.

This is a film all about the thing that occurs between two people just before a relationship starts. Past Lives is all suspense, always, and thanks to Song’s firm grip on the subject matter, it makes for visceral, scintillating viewing. Song seems to have her finger on the pulse of the human condition. These people know each other intimately, and yet … should they? Could they? Would it ever work? Shouldn’t they try?

Past Lives spends its entire run time building up to an answer. When it finally gets there, it will tear your heart in three. I saw this when it debuted to a packed festival house at The Civic, and I’ve never been part of an audience that felt so on edge, like we were collectively inhaling. By the end, it doesn’t seem like a spoiler to say there was a deathly silence, followed by gasps, sobs and plenty of damp cheeks.

Past Lives (Photo: Supplied/NZIFF)

My heart hurts, and it’s taken me weeks to understand why. Yes, Past Lives is a bruising viewing experience. Song’s film asks deep questions about how the past can influence the present and how much history it’s healthy to bring with you. It will make you examine your own past, your choices, and whether you’ve put the correct amount of weight on those decisions. Most of all, it’s a film that asks: can you ever go back?

It’s forced me to spend the past four weeks replaying key scenes over and over in my mind: the way Nora smiles at Hae Sung in a different way to everyone else; the awkward way he stands when he’s about to see her for the first time in a decade; and the gut-wrenching bar conversation that plays out between three people, in two languages, with every single available human emotion on display.

This year’s best viewing has been found in the most unexpected places: the third episode love story in HBO’s grisly zombie apocalypse The Last of Us, the dark underbelly of grief that plays out in Aussie horror Talk To Me, or the jaded eye rolls of Dre in Prime Video’s serial killer show Swarm.

Past Lives scours similar territory, yet it finds a bottomless pit in the simplest story of all: two people who can’t decide if they’re right for each other. Be warned: you won’t emerge unscathed.

Keep going!
A collage of Mike Puru photographs
Mike Purus we have known (Image: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureSeptember 1, 2023

The sadness of Mike Puru moving to France

A collage of Mike Puru photographs
Mike Purus we have known (Image: Archi Banal)

It’s nice for him but a huge ‘sacré bleu’ for our nation, writes Alex Casey.

The “why I’m leaving New Zealand” headlines have all started to blur together. Grumble grumble lost our mojo. Grumble grumble past our peak. Grumble grumble can’t watch The Bear at the same time as everyone else. Everyone from rich listers to rugby players, fashion designers to passionate nudists appear to be fleeing our fair country, but there was a new addition to the canon this week that made me gasp Pacific’s triple star. 


Published on Now to Love, the online arm of Woman’s Day, the beloved broadcaster stands beaming in a pale pink shirt. On his left, a beautiful green tree reaches optimistically towards the sun. On his right looms a hostile looking concrete building, all sharp corners and giant glass panes. I’ve done enough NCEA art history to know what this all means: a battle of good vs evil, nature vs industry, a man trapped between a tree (France) and a hard place (New Zealand). 

The article begins by explaining why Puru left Flava back in June. “They thought moving me aside was the best plan of attack,” he told Woman’s Day. “I’ve been here before and I didn’t take it personally. I was just a player in a big puzzle and I didn’t fit in that particular square.” It is a familiar story – in 2016 he was dumped as host of The Bachelor NZ for Dominic Bowden, just one year after having his contract at The Edge scrapped after over 20 years at the station

Mike Puru hosting The Bachelor NZ in 2015

Despite these shaftings, which include the eternally crushing detail that Puru wasn’t allowed to eat the catering provided on the set of The Bachelor NZ, the broadcaster has still remained one of our most positive and prolific personalities for nearly three decades. Most recently appearing on The Traitors NZ, where he was unceremoniously banished early on (probably for eating from the wrong table), he’s basically become the Forrest Gump of New Zealand popular culture.  

Mike Puru was there for the heyday of The Edge Morning Madhouse where, for all the zany stunts and shock jock comments from his colleagues, he quietly made history after coming out on air in 2010. Mike Puru was there for Flipside, the cutting-edge youth current affairs series of the early 2000s that dared to merge the internet and TV. Mike Puru was there for the launch of New Zealand’s first shopping channel in the early 2010s, where he sold the shit out of some slap-on sunglasses.

But wait, there’s more. Mike Puru was there when Art Green and Matilda Rice fell in love in The Bachelor NZ season one in 2015, and again when Jordan Mauger flipped a coin in season two. Mike Puru was there to launch “morning television heaven” in The Cafe, and NZ Herald’s hectic new online shopping channel The Selection. He’s covered the weather on Newshub for every public holiday and last minute sickness, even when forecasting a serious case of the squits for himself

Don’t you dare blame it on the weatherman

All these remarkable achievements, without even mentioning the near four-minute long media-themed musical number he performed at the Voyager Awards this year, and yet we’ve still never given Puru the props he deserves. “I was getting bogged down in trying to prove myself in New Zealand,” he told Woman’s Day. “I thought, ‘Do I hang around here and keep trying to do radio or do I have some years in France running a little bed and breakfast?’”

Unlike Marc Ellis and Paul Henry, Puru appears to hold no resentment towards an industry and a country which has largely taken him for granted for most of his career. “I love New Zealand and everything that’s here, but I think for the first time in my life, I’m ready to take on that challenge.” It’s that Puru sunny disposition, that endless well of “joie de vivre”, which is why his departure will be a massive “sacre bleu” for our National Positivity Index. 

With plans to sell up and move to France in mid-2024, Puru’s goal is to build a home studio and launch a country music radio station. It’s a life that we can all aspire to and simply cannot begrudge but, most importantly, still leaves us time to organise a ticker tape parade, a travelling audiovisual retrospective, a collective “bon voyage” and “merci” to the man, the myth, the Mike. Perhaps someone, anyone, can even cough up for some catering this time around. 

But wait there's more!