Why Past Lives Isn’t Your Average Unrequited Love Story

Five years ago, Celine Song was at East Village bar Please Don’t Tell, sitting between two men: her “white American husband” and her “childhood sweetheart” from South Korea. Though Song, who was born in South Korea before moving to Canada at 12, speaks both English and Korean, her seatmates were separated by a language barrier, pushing Song into the role of translator for the night. “I remember sitting there and feeling that something special was passing through us,” the playwright recalls on a recent Zoom call. “I can actually communicate and have a unique relationship with these two guys because they actually can’t do anything for me that the other person can do. My childhood friend only knows me as a kid, and doesn’t really know me as an adult. My husband knows me as an adult, but has no idea what I was like as a kid.”

The experience sparked something for Song, who used it as inspiration for her stunning directorial debut, Past Lives. What from certain angles looks like a traditional love-triangle story—where New York-based playwright Nora (a brilliant Greta Lee) is torn between Arthur (John Magaro), her white American husband, and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), the crush she left behind in Seoul when she immigrated as a child—reveals itself to be anything but. Instead, as Hae Sung stumbles into Nora’s orbit twelve years after their separation (and again, twelve years after that), the decades-spanning Past Lives morphs into a meditation on relocation and assimilation, an examination of the tension that exists between our pasts and presents, and an ode to the connections that irrevocably define us. Through her acclaimed plays, Song has exhibited a knack for capturing raw human emotion with unrelentingly striking clarity. With Past Lives, she shows that these feelings can ring just as true on the screen as they do on the stage.

This story is so personal. How did it feel to excavate these very intimate details?

I didn’t really find it that difficult, because I wasn’t trying to transcribe or recreate something. I talk about it as an adaptation, like I’m adapting my own source material. It’s an objectifying experience of a subjective feeling.

How did you approach casting?

This whole movie lives and dies with the face of the actor. I don’t have action sequences and CGI to cover up whatever might be lacking, so [the acting] has to be the most cutting-edge thing. The thing that I was looking for is a soul match to the character. It really wasn’t about replicating people. I don’t look like Greta [Lee]. But she’ll look like a strong, professional, woman in one moment, and in the next, like an insecure kid. Same thing with Teo [Yoo]. When he isn’t smiling, he can feel a little aloof or dry. There’s a sternness to him. But when he smiles, there’s something that’s so warm, he straight-up looks six years old. That’s the kind of duality I needed.

The film opens on our central trio, yet the voices we hear are from two unseen people trying to figure out their connection. Did you always want to kick the film off like this?

It was the first scene that I wrote, and that’s when I knew that I could write the movie. That scene had to be confrontational, but also warm and welcoming. I sometimes talk about this movie as a “mystery film”—not as a whodunit, but as a mystery of who these three people are to each other. And when we come back to that scene later, the audience, because they went through these lives with these characters, are going to see the three of them completely differently. They’re going to have their own thoughts about and solutions to the mystery.

Coming from a writing background, I know words (and how they’re used to communicate, message, and signal) are important to you. But I’m curious how you think this extends to translation. So much of the tension in Past Lives has to do with language and translation.

Translation is at the heart of what the story is. I actually wrote the script in two languages, I have a bilingual script. When I was working on the subtitles, it was important when they show up and when they don’t, and which words are on which images. Those were all specific choices. When Arthur and Hae Sung meet each other for the first time, Arthur says hello in Korean, and Hae Sung says hello in English. I always find it so touching that these two guys see each other for the first time and really try to speak each other’s language.

Nora is translation embodied, because you can’t dismiss either part of her. She cannot erase Hae Sung in the same way she cannot erase Arthur in her life. She’s having to translate between these two guys, but that means that she’s also translating between different parts of her life while also translating for us, the audience, what this feels like.

There’s a way to watch this where you feel inclined to root for Nora and Hae Sung, because “childhood sweethearts” usually end up together in movies. In that way, Arthur could feel like a roadblock to that end—or as he says in that bedroom scene, like the villain in this story. But I never felt that way about him because of how sensitively he’s written. Were you considering the way his character would be seen by the audience?

Because we’ve been following the story of Hae Sung and Nora for the first chunk of the film, I don’t expect people to see Arthur and be like, “Oh, yay!” You’re supposed to see him and be like, “Oh, fuck. Uh-oh.” You’re supposed to have that reaction. But by displaying deep love and a tremendous amount of care for his wife, you grow to love, or at least understand him.

I really wanted these characters to feel like fully fleshed-out people we can connect to, and that has to do with their emotional intelligence. They’re able to communicate and articulate what they’re going through. They think about where they are in the universe, what they want, what they hope for themselves, and most importantly, what they hope for each other, because some of it has to do with the responsibility they feel for each other. I was like, “There’s something so dramatic about these ordinary people. I think there’s drama in that. But is it going to be seen as drama?”

I see it as a very human drama! Which is why I loved the final scene, because it’s neither happy nor sad—it’s just real. We see that all three characters have gone through this profound life-altering experience, but we also know they’ll move on. It’s not a rom-com celebration, but it’s not depressing either.

You said it exactly. There’s a mark left on their souls by this visit. I often talk about the walk home and the reason why Nora’s crying. It’s easy to think of that as, “Does that mean she wants to be with the other guy?” No. She’s grieving the little girl she didn’t get to grieve as a kid, because she was too young. That’s why when we flash back to the moment when the children say goodbye, it’s in the dark—they’re finally getting to say the goodbye they were owed for 24 years. That’s the only way the two of them can let go of that little girl together.

Also, just like Hae Sung got to know Nora as an adult by making this visit, Arthur gets to know his wife as a kid, as a little crybaby who’s crying in his arms. I knew that was the ending. That’s the way it should be, and absolutely, I don’t think it’s depressing. It might point to something in the audience’s life that is sad, but I don’t think it’s a sad ending.

That’s how I directed Teo as he was driving out the city, too. He was like, “What is my facial expression?” And I was like, “You should look relieved. You’ve got what you came here to do, which is to close the door. You came here to say goodbye to that little girl and to meet this grown woman that the little girl became. Now, you can move forward.”

Past Lives is now in theaters for a limited release and out nationwide on June 23rd.