Past Lives, Korean writer Celine Song‘s first directorial effort from her own screenplay, tells how Nora Moon (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), childhood friends, were separated at age 12 when Nora’s family emigrated to Toronto in Canada from Seoul, the capital of South Korea. After briefly meeting via Skype 12 years later, they meet again in person another 12 years after that, when Hae Sung visits New York and meets Arthur (John Magaro), her American husband.
Following its debut at Sundance in 2023, this small independent film has received five Golden Globes nominations from international journalists, several other awards from various film critics’ organizations, and two Oscar nominations. Why did this movie arouse so much admiration?
Celine Song © Matthew Dunivan
Explains the director, married in life to writer Justin Kuritzkes, writer of Challengers by Luca Guadagnino: “This story, for me autobiographical, has become personal for the audience. You don’t necessarily have to be an immigrant who crossed the Pacific Ocean and left his country, language and culture at a young age, to miss how you were as a child. When you see an old friend who knew you back then, you remember how you were, surrounded by the feelings, light and smells of your childhood. That person no longer exists now that you are an adult, but you see it reflected in the eyes of the other, as a hologram of yourself at a completely different time in your life.”
“Nora’s husband knows that his wife’s Korean friend comes to see her, like a ghost from his past, because he is in love with her, and when he hears them speaking in a language he does not understand, he is terrified, but he sits there at the bar without saying a word. She must accept the reality of the facts, that there is a part of her that he will never know.”
Greta Lee, born in Los Angeles to Korean parents and an actress on The Morning Show with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, adds, “The concept of In-Yun (destiny) in Buddhist Korean philosophy refers to relationships that are repeated over many previous and future lives. When Nora is sitting in the middle, flanked by these two men, it’s as if she’s on the threshold of two worlds and two cultures, and she’s taking a leap in time and space, in two different versions of herself.”
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