Filmmaker Celine Song talks about ‘Past Lives’

CHICAGO — “First time in Chicago!” Celine Song says, grinning, in between talking about her superb feature film debut as writer-director, “Past Lives.” We’re having coffee downtown, the morning after her film played the Chicago Critics Film Festival at the Music Box Theatre.

Also, “first time at the Music Box! That theater is so magical! You can just feel the history. I know Chicago best through ‘The Bear.’ Do Chicagoans love ‘The Bear’?” Some do, some don’t, I say. The geographical-accuracy police hate it most of all, I tell her. “Ah, yes, I get a little like that with New York movies. And I suspect some New Yorkers will feel that way about mine. The train locations aren’t always correct.”

Song’s story in “Past Lives” spans 24 years in the life of Nora (Greta Lee), whose family leaves Seoul, South Korea, for Toronto when the girl was 12 and went by the name Na Young. Twelve years later, at the dawn of Skype, Nora reconnects online with her dear, distant Seoul childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who remains in South Korea.

“Past Lives” then takes another 12-year leap forward. Nora, now a writer, has married Arthur (John Magaro), also a writer. Now 36, Hae Sung visits New York with no stated reason, though to Nora, as well as Nora’s husband, the unstated reasons are clear enough, and stir within Nora questions of cultural dislocation and identity. The story came from a similar incident in Song’s life five years ago.

She relocated from Toronto to New York in 2011 for graduate studies at Columbia University. Now 34, Song’s playwriting career, she says, has been overtaken by a new love. “I have fallen too hard with filmmaking,” she says, “to go back.” Not quite six months into 2023, “Past Lives” is a lot of people’s favorite film of the year so far — not universally beloved, to be sure, and some who admire it also complain about its lack of friction.

That’s a quality the filmmaker acknowledges, though by another name. The story, she says, is about three people “trying to treat each other like adults, with care and maturity. It happens all the time in life.” The following has been edited for clarity and length.

Like Nora, your main character, you immigrated to Canada when you were 12?

Toronto, yeah.

And your parents are both artists —

My dad is a screenwriter and film director ( Neung-han Song ), and my mom is an illustrator and graphic designer. I grew up when she was drawing children’s books. My dad is a really significant filmmaker in Korean cinema; different directors, including Bong Joon-ho ( “Parasite” ), talk about his influence on their own work. But for me, my dad is just my dad.

In your play “Endlings,” there’s a passage where one of the pearl divers says to her daughter: “If you respect me at all, move away from me. Move to a different city. Different country. Different planet.”

That’s my play! (laughs) I mean, there are so many different kinds of stories about how people immigrate, and how people feel about it. I can only speak about how Nora in the movie feels about it, and in a separate way how I feel about it. For me, it wasn’t something I did against my will. I wanted to immigrate. And I’m very happy to be here! And that’s also true of Nora. But I’m not speaking for everybody’s immigrant experience. Everyone has a different way, just as everyone goes through a marriage differently. Or responding to their ex coming back to town differently.

(In “Past Lives”) Nora doesn’t think she has anything to grieve until Hae Sung comes to visit her 24 years after the fact. His visit, it’s the first time it occurs to Nora that there is part of her she left behind. Through this evolving relationship to Hae Sung, who really only knows her as the little girl she was when they were 12, Nora has a chance to see the girl she left behind clearly. And then she’s able to say goodbye to her properly.

In the scenes when the characters are in their early 20s I talked to the actors this way: This is a movie about three goodbyes, two bad ones and one good one. When they’re 12, these people don’t know how to articulate what they’re feeling. The second time, at 24, they’re still too young. At 24, we’re quicker to feel things — quicker to be upset, quicker to feel moved, or sad, quicker to laugh. It’s about the pacing of your emotion. Then, when they’re 36, the pace of their feelings changes again. It’s tentative, and more thoughtful.

I was so grateful for a movie showing a way to get through some difficult emotional churn, without a lot of contrived drama.

We all have our prejudices meeting people. And then people reveal themselves to you. These people are trying to treat each other like adults, with care and maturity.