In the newest A24 film “Past Lives,” Na Young is a young girl from Seoul whose family is immigrating to North America at age 12. She’s forced to leave behind her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung, and both are too young to grasp the weight of what’s happening. Two decades later, Na, who goes by her chosen Western name of Nora, works as a New York playwright when Hae visits. The film follows the pair’s reuniting, as Nora’s white American husband, Arthur, learns of their past connection.
This is the feature debut from Celine Song, a playwright in New York. She was born in South Korea, then immigrated to Toronto at 12 years old. She also changed her name, although there are different opinions on how her family landed on it. She says it came from either Canadian mega-star Celine Dion, or from the 1974 French film “Celine and Julie Go Boating.”
As “Past Lives” opens, the audience enters a New York City bar, where Nora sits between Arthur and Hae Sung, acting as the bridge between men from different cultures. Meanwhile, other patrons are trying to figure out how these three relate to each other. The scene is meant to intrigue, implicate, and welcome the audience into the fictional world, Song explains. A similar experience played out in her real life too.
Much like Nora, Song always felt tenderness toward her childhood best friend. Yet, she went years without thinking about him.
“The thing that is amazing about immigration of that kind — there are parts of it that’s universal. … You may have left your hometown in Houston and then moved to LA to pursue your dreams, or you moved on from a lover. Whatever kind of displacement or whatever kind of leaving that you have done in your life, that can all relate to a version of this.”
Song describes navigating life in the U.S. as a doughnut — someone has left behind a part of their life, leaving a hole in their being.
“The thing about the film is that being an immigrant and living in New York City with my one American husband — the person he loves is a doughnut, is a person with a piece of her that is elsewhere. A piece of her that is missing because it is in a different language and a different culture that existed for her in her childhood.”
In the film, that missing part suddenly reappears, changing Nora’s worldview.
“The doughnut hole flies 14 hours on a plane to come visit a doughnut. So I think that the doughnut hole is a reminder for Nora that there was something that got left behind. And I think it was something that Nora didn't realize until Hae Sung did come to see her.”
In creating Arthur, Song says she wanted a realistic and mature character who accepts the situation for what it is.
“Often, movies are about adults behaving like children to create drama. And in this movie, it was really important to me that everybody was intelligent and emotionally intelligent. And they also were able to care for each other as adults do all the time. And I think that is something that we rarely see on screen.”
She adds, “I wanted him to be in a good marriage with her. I wanted him to love her and care for her, and know and accept the ways in which he cannot be everything for her. He cannot be her past. He cannot be the part of her that misses Korea. He cannot be Korea. But what he can be is the person that she is married to in the present, and what he can be is somebody who's trying.”
Teo Yoo and Greta Lee star in “Past Lives.” Photo courtesy of A24.
Another central concept in the film is In-Yun, which Song describes as the sense of destiny that comes in the shape of a person or relationship.
“Eastern philosophy and their idea of destiny is about something that comes to you. Destiny is something that walks in the door or something that approaches you without you having any control over it. And I think that the idea of In-Yun is about every relationship that you have in the world, and it can be as small as the person who brushes up against you in the street. And then you have to say, ‘Oh, sorry, excuse me’ that you walked by. But it can also be as deep as your mother, or the partner that you're with for 30 years.”
Song stresses that at the core of In-Yun is the lack of control.
“It is about the certain kinds of In-Yun that are ineffable, that you can't describe in words what it is. There's some people in our lives that you just meet, and you're like, ‘I know you and [we] have something special with each other. It is not possible to explain why or how, but I know that you and I have always known each other, or we have some ways that our destinies are connected.’”