Festival phenom Past Lives was made to present the ordinary as extraordinary - Action News
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Festival phenom Past Lives was made to present the ordinary as extraordinary

Writer and director Celine Song's debut film, Past Lives, is knocking critics and festival-goers off their feet. Song told CBC News she wrote the film to examine ordinary people doing things that are "pretty extraordinary.''

Director Celine Song's debut film wows audiences at Sundance, Berlinale

Celine Song wrote her debut film Past Lives to make the ordinary extraordinary

1 year ago
Duration 6:24
Celine Song's debut film Past Lives is already being hailed as one of the best movies of 2023. CBC sat down with the Canadian writer and director about pulling the story of ordinary people doing the extraordinary from her own life.

From the outside, you'd be excused for thinking Celine Song's debut film might be a memoir of sorts. Like Nora, the lead character, Song left South Korea for Canada as a young girl. Like Nora, she also has two successful artists for parents, an illustrator and filmmaker, and moved to New York to pursue a career as a writer.

And just like the opening scene of her film, Song also once found herself sitting between her husband, who is white, and childhood sweetheart, who is Korean, in a bar in the East Village. She was translating for each of them, two men from different income levels, different languages and different cultural backgrounds: "These two people who had no reason to meet each other, let alone try to get to know each other," she said.

That was the moment Past Lives first took shape.

"I was looking around the bar that night and I saw the people in the bar looking at us, trying to figure out who we were to each other," Song told CBC News. "So I think the first thought I had was like, 'Oh, wouldn't you like to know who we are to each other?' And then the second thought I had was, 'OK, well, what if I actually took the time in the movie to tell youthe answer to that question?'"

  • Watch Song's full interview with CBC News above.

From that question grew what she describes as a mystery in the form of a romance, a story about a woman navigating feelings for an old flame she reconnected with over Skype, and the man she eventually married.

A smiling woman looks off the the left.
Korean-Canadian director Celine Song's debut film, Past Lives, is already collecting rave reviews. As it debuts in various regions in the coming weeks, Song's just hoping audiences are willing to go along for the ride. (Nav Rahi/CBC)

The achievement is already evident. As her first-ever film, Past Lives debuted at Sundance, then moved on to Berlinale where a film her father Song Neung-han co-wrote, The Taebaek Mountains, played back in 1995. There, Past Liveshas already been hailed as one of the best movies of the year, though Song says she had much humbler aspirations and they weren't about showcasing her own lifestory.

"I felt like it felt really important to tell the story of ordinary people that are able to do something pretty extraordinary," Song explained.

A playwright by trade, Song explained she's most compelled to try things that push the boundariesand introduce something new. Whether that be her rendition of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull staged in the game Sims 4, or working as a writer on Amazon's wildly ambitious The Wheel of Time, her work tries to challenge the medium she's working in as well as the audience.

In Past Lives, she took a different tack. While the story draws from her experience, it exists as a challenge to show how the seeming mundanity of everyday life is infused with meaning. And as the film opens up to wider audiences, she says she can only hope they're willing to give it a chance.

"I want there to be kind of openness to that, and what I hope is that at the end of this film, when you're walking out, I want it to have gotten under your skin so that it feels as personal to them as it did to me making the movie," she said. "I want this story to feel like it's one of their own."

Past Livesreleases in the U.S. June 2, and will beginits theatrical run in Toronto on June 9 before opening in more theatres across the country.

A man, left, and a woman smile and hold hands as the walk down a city street on a bright sunny day.
Greta Lee, right, appears alongside co-star John Magaro in a still from Past Lives. (Jon Pack)