When writer-director Celine Song broke down in tears in the future on the set of Past Lives, the crew assumed it was as a result of the scene, eerily near her personal childhood expertise, was overwhelming her. They had been in South Korea, filming the flashback second when the 12-year-old protagonist of Past Lives, Nora, says goodbye to her childhood greatest buddy, Hae Sung, as she and her household put together to to migrate to Canada.
In actuality, it was the solar that acquired to Song. Unable to get the sunshine she hoped for, she was upset not about her previous however about her current: the stress she felt to get her very first film proper. “This film is unbelievably personal to me, of course, in the conception of it, but it is unbelievably personal to me because it is a discovery for me as an artist,” says Song. “This is what I’ve always been meant to do. I just feel at home here.”
It’s becoming that Song, who beforehand discovered success as a playwright in New York, makes use of the phrase residence to explain her directorial debut. Past Lives is about what house is, in so some ways. Song’s script, impressed by her personal life, follows Nora, a author dwelling in New York whose childhood sweetheart comes to go to her, opening her as much as a tense exploration of her previous, her identification as an grownup, and the which means of affection.
Intimate but sweeping, Past Lives was the breakout of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, drawing reward not only for Song’s distinctive storytelling and visuals, however for the performances from stars Greta Lee, John Magaro, and Teo Yoo. “The fact that all these audiences globally are responding to it, and it’s a personal conversation they’re having with the film, is really amazing,” says Song. “This makes me feel less lonely, and that’s what you dream of as an artist: that your work, when it’s in the hands of the world, makes yourself feel less lonely.”
John Magaro costars as Nora’s husband.Courtesy of A24.
Song talks about love quite a bit—and never simply because Past Lives is a contemporary tackle the traditional love triangle. In our conversations she’s fast to make use of love as a metaphor for a lot of issues, together with her romance of greater than 10 years with the town of New York and her current breakup with the theater world.
Song moved to New York from Ontario to attend Columbia University, the place she earned her MFA in playwriting in 2014. The daughter of artists (her mom is an illustrator and graphic designer and her father a filmmaker), she says she all the time knew she wished to be a author and remembers writing a poem a couple of spider consuming a butterfly whereas she was nonetheless dwelling in Korea—“I think it was before I emigrated, so it was before I was 12,” she says. She thought-about being a copywriter or one thing else in journalism however zeroed in on dramatic writing whereas in New York.
The metropolis performs a prevalent function in Past Lives, as Nora (Lee) takes Hae Sung (Yoo) across the metropolis, from the Statue of Liberty to Jane’s Carousel to Madison Square Park. For Nora, Hae Sung represents a house left behind and a life (and love) that might have been, nevertheless it’s additionally clear that New York—and her husband (Magaro)—are actually residence. Song appears to really feel the identical concerning the metropolis, regardless of its flaws. “There are rats in the streets and lantern flies are everywhere and it’s flooding, so it’s really hard to imagine that you can love New York that much,” she tells me, breaking right into a smile. “But sometimes you just feel like New York loves you because it’s really just a feeling, just a certain sunlight going through the buildings. But you know that New York wouldn’t give a shit if you left. So it’s this amazing thing of being loved by somebody who doesn’t need you at all.”