Past Lives invites us to hold space for what could’ve been, what is, and what may be
Past Lives is the latest A24 feature film. depicts the complexity of modern romance, written and directed by Korean Canadian filmmaker Celine Song.
Despite its name, it’s not a film about multiverses of infinite possibilities. But it does remind us a bit of another A24 film, The Farewell in that it stars a young female who has a connection to more than one physical home and how that impacts her heart. Similarly, Past Lives is also performed largely in Korean.
Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance. John Magaro (The Umbrella Academy) also stars in the film and that’s where the love triangle comes into play.
Past Lives invites audiences to sit with the choices we’ve made, what we wish could’ve been, wonder what the future may hold, all while encouraging us to take control of our own lives. And if I’m being honest, I see a bit of myself in each character with their nuanced portrayals of the complexities of modern romance and growth. “This movie is about mature adults trying to be decent and mature, but being authentic to how hard that is,” shares Lee in the interview clip below.
Cold Tea Collective sat down to speak with Past Lives writer-director Celine Song and two of its stars, Greta Lee and Teo Yoo. See snippets of our interviews in the Instagram posts below and continue reading.
Past Lives aims to find the truth in universal experiences
First-time feature film writer and director Celine Song stayed true to her own experiences. While the story follows Nora as she moves throughout her life, much of that mirrors Song’s own lived experiences.
“The way that I approach [filmmaking] has to do with pursuing the truth of something; the emotional, psychological or ideological truth,” says Song.
Both Song and the main character Nora move from South Korea as children to Toronto Canada, and then at 24 move to New York to pursue their dreams to become a writer.
The filmmaker uses the universal experience of moving homes to signal changes we go through as we mature into adulthood. “It can be something as simple as being with a person for a few years and then that relationship ends, and then it really feels like you’re leaving the country. Those are the things that you and that person built. So I think that it can be universal in that way,” she says.
This universality in experience plays an integral role in helping audiences connect to the characters in the film.
“I know that everybody’s going to feel very connected to the character of Nora because she is very without shame, somebody who is going through a very specific experience, which then of course everybody can connect to,” shares Song.
Germany-born South Korean actor Teo Yoo, who plays Hae Sung, also finds connection to his character from his real life experiences. “The notion that I always carry is a certain type of melancholy in my life because of my specific immigrant background. I was born and raised in Germany and thereby always lived with that feeling of displacement…same thing when I moved back to Korea 15 years ago.” Yoo shares that he was happy to be cast in Past Lives to explore this feeling also on a personal level.
Read also: Asian Representation in Hollywood: Why So Late?
Creating space for multiple identities to exist
Refreshingly, Past Lives is not a film about someone grappling with their identity or connection to their culture – at least not in an existential crisis kind of way. The multiplicity of cultural identities simply exists rather than serving to confuse the characters.
When Nora ultimately meets face to face with Hae Sung again as an older adult in her mid-30’s, she explains to her husband that she feels very “not Korean” compared to Hae Sung who she describes as “Korean Korean”. Despite this, Nora doesn’t feel in contention with herself, but instead recognizes that it’s a part of who she is and is not something to be tucked away.
We appreciate that Nora isn’t torn between her Korean heritage and her Canadian and American heritage. Intelligently, the film is written to go beyond the narrative we’ve previously seen in mainstream media portrayals of the Asian North American diaspora’s experience.
Certainly Hae Sung serves to connect Nora to her culture, but she’s also experienced a whole world of personal and professional growth on her own – and now with her husband. Instead, the conflict in the film is more so driven to create a love triangle.
Song specifically did not want to position Arthur (played by John Magaro) as this ‘evil white man’. Arthur is written as an intelligent character who understands the complexity of her relationship with Hae Sung; he truly understands how his partner has a whole inner world that he may not be able to ever connect directly with, despite improving his Korean over the years.
“You dream in Korean” is the line that got me. Without knowing it, Nora’s inner world (albeit in her sleep) dreams of a deeper connection with the young girl who said goodbye to her home country and all the things and people that feel like home to her – including what she had that never materialized with Hae Sung.
Song describes Nora and Hae Sung’s relationship as complex. “They’re not really exes, they’re not really lovers…they’re friends, but that doesn’t fully encapsulate who they are to each other…it’s deeper than that.”
And the concept of inyeon goes much deeper than that.
The Korean concept of inyeon connects us to others and ourselves
The Korean concept of inyeon is a core theme of the story. It refers to the relationships and ties we have with other people throughout our lives: in the past, present, and future. It is the culmination of events that have taken place over thousands of years – fate and trusting these connections we have with others. But as audiences will see in the film, it’s more than just fate.
When asked why she decided to focus on this as a core thread throughout the film, the filmmaker explains that there is no word to describe Nora and Hae Sung’s relationship.
“It’s a kind of indescribable feeling of feeling like ‘I know this person really well, I’ve known them forever and maybe in another life I knew this person in a deeper way.’ It’s just that feeling,” says Song.
The concept of inyeon is not just a Korean concept – it exists in general in Eastern philosophy; it’s a different conception of destiny and destined persons. Sometimes some relationships even if there’s no word for them, they really endure through time.
When it comes to recognizing inyeon in their own lives, Greta Lee who plays Nora describes it as the way she feels about this particular project.
“The inyeon that we have all together in making this feels very distinct and very real as a reformed former cynic,” says Lee.
Teo Yoo describes Song’s incorporation of inyeon into the story as a beautiful and masterful love triangle and considers it as something he will take forward into his acting career.
“Having worked so deeply with a concept for our film, from here on into the future, I’ll think of my characters in the type of way that I have to act. The possibility of a past or future life of me really being one of those characters helps me get into character and delve a little deeper. In that sense, I’m carrying that away from our experience,” says Yoo.
—
Past Lives is now playing in select cities in Canada and the U.S. with a nation-wide release on June 23, 2023. Thank you to Celine Song, Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, Mrkt Co, A24 and Elevation Pictures.
Help us uplift Asian diaspora voices
Support Cold Tea Collective with a monthly contribution to help ensure stories for and by the next generation of the Asian diaspora are here to stay.
