‘Past Lives’ Director Celine Song Is Already Excited About Her Next A24 Film [Interview]

Breaking news for anyone blown away by Celine Song’s “Past Lives” or hoping to nail her down for her second project. She’s already written a script and A24, which produced the Sundance and Berlin Film Festival breakout, is going to make it. And how excited is she about it? She zings, “You can see it in my eyes.”

READ MORE: “Past Lives” Review: Celine Song delivers a bittersweet and stunning romance in directorial debut [Sundance]

In her feature film debut, Song has crafted one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, a drama spanning 20 years and a romance of love lost (or not). The film begins in the late-’90s as two Korean childhood sweethearts foster a bond more than traditional friendship. When Nora (played as a kid by Seung Ah Moon) announces she is leaving with her family to move to Canada, Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim as a youngster), is brokenhearted. A decade later, they find each other through Facebook with Nora living in New York City (now played by Greta Lee) while Hae Sung (now Teo Yoo) is still trying to figure out a career in Seoul. They rediscover their connection on Skype, but can their love grow a literal half a world apart?

Both Lee and Yoo are accomplished actors in their own right (the former has been on “Russian Doll” and “The Morning Show” while the latter has had an impressive career in both Korean and international films). So much so, that Song says she didn’t feel any screen test was necessary between them (“Part of it is just intuition. You just know they will have chemistry”). What she was more concerned about, understandably, were the two child actors who the audience is introduced to initially. She found Ah Moon first, but Min Yim was one of three boys to film a chemistry test with her.

“The boy who was in the movie did such a beautiful piece of ad-lib and did such a deeply emotional performance of asking her to stay,” Song recalls. “It really felt like he really wanted her to stay, and the little girl started crying. Because she started crying and he started asking me, ‘Does she have to leave? Does Nora have to leave in the movie?’ And then I was like, ‘Yes, Nora does have to leave in the movie, but you don’t have to leave. It’s O.K.’ So I did have to do a chemistry read there because it’s like that deep chemistry between the two of them really is a building block for a relationship because that’s where the chemistry can really begin from. And of course, once we had their natural chemistry, Teo and Greta watched their performance [to] sort of build something on their own.”

Over the course of our conversation last week, Song reflected on scaring her leading stars that the entire film hinged on one “hell week” of production, how she decided that a true life experience was better for a film than a play, whether she’s ready for the long road ahead (cough, awards, cough) and much, much more.

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The Playlist: I know you’ve had Sundance, you had Berlin, and you’ve had all these screenings, but tomorrow is opening day. Will you be sneaking into a theater to see how people react?

Celine Song: Well, everybody saying that I should do that and I don’t know. I stopped watching the movie when I do the screenings because I feel like I’m such an over-thinker. I sometimes can overthink and the movie is done and the movie is ready to receive audiences and regular ticket buyers. So to me, I’m just excited to sort of unleash it into the world like this. It’s so exciting. It’s what I’ve been building up to, what I’ve been dreaming about for months, for years, honestly.

You never know what’s going to happen and it’s a long road, but I’m assuming A24 has sat you down and said, “This movie’s still going to be part of your life for the next year.” That there’s a long road for this movie.

Here’s the thing, when you’re making the movie, the thing that you’re thinking about is making the movie. And there’s a limit to how much you can expect from other people. I think that if I was thinking about other people’s expectations, I think I couldn’t have made a movie like this really honestly, because I feel like what really made sense to me is my own guiding principle about what feels true to me or what feels authentic to me or feels like a movie that I would care about or what I love. And that’s what I could really focus on there. Then now it’s sort of out of my hands and it’s going out into the world. It’s like, yeah, I think the expectations are poison. You just can’t think about anything except the excitement of the very next thing that’s coming up, which is the movie is going to be in the movie theaters and you can buy a ticket to go see the movie. And I hope just a random person who I don’t know anything about is able to come and just feels like they just maybe want to check this out. And I think the experience of that, I think that is sort of my next thing and everything else is bonus or gravy.

I know that this movie is inspired by an event that happened in your life. It’s not an autobiography, but do you remember after that event how soon you had the inspiration to turn it into a screenplay?

Yes. I mean, I feel like I was sitting there in that bar and really feeling like, “This feels really special. This feels like a, maybe it’s a thing, maybe it’s a thing I can make something with.” But just things like that. And I know you know exactly what this feels like because you’re a writer yourself, but it’s like there are some things that you’re like, “Huh, maybe pile.” But the maybe pile, some of the things go away, and some of the things stick. Some of the things that just kind of stay on the maybe pile and you’re like, “O.K., so let me just check it out.” So I started to just tell this story to a few of my friends, and what I really learned is that it opened up something in them and they were sharing their own stories about something, or we kind of went to a deeper place in our friendship because of me telling them that story. And I was like, “If it can inspire something like that, the story that feels like maybe it is too mundane or too ordinary people,” it’s too much about ordinary people for it to be it a story, even for it to be even a story. The fact that when I tell this story that feels so mundane can inspire such deep emotions from people that I’m telling the story to, I was like, “O.K., maybe this is a project that is worth pursuing.” So I think that’s really what really made me want to go to the blank page.

You are an established playwright. You’ve written for television. You’ve probably written other screenplays. How did you know, “Nope, this isn’t a play. I’m going to format this in a screenplay and sort of go in that direction”?

I think that it really had to do with the story itself. This is a movie where locations actually matter so much because how Seoul is and how different Seoul is compared to New York, for example, is actually a part of the storytelling. And then the other part of it is that it is also a movie about aging and a movie about growing older and growing up. And also you need to see these characters as children too. It is a movie that spans decades and continents. So, it really did feel like it needed to be done in a way that was cinematic, more than anything.

Obviously, casting is important in any film, no matter what story you’re telling.

Every film.

Every film. But did you feel like you needed to have your leads do a screen test together? Did they need to jump on a Zoom call together? How important was that before you finally decided who was going to play these roles?

Well, I think the chemistry reads, I didn’t feel like I need to do it because part of it is just intuition. You just know they will have chemistry. So some of it is just like you’re like, you just get to know them individually and you know that there’s going to be chemistry. And also, of course, I know that chemistry is something that you can build as well. As long as there’s a spark of it, there’s a possibility of it. Then you can always build by, of course, just working on it, but also just with them naturally getting to know each other too. So it is really something like you’re doing kind of from your heart more than anything casting. But I think I did do a chemistry read with the children because I found little Nora and she was amazing and really, she was so talented and she was the right person for the character. But I hadn’t found the boy yet. So I did bring in a few boys to chemistry read with her. And what I did was, because there’s not enough dialogue for the kids, I actually asked them to do something that is really difficult to ask even adults to do, which is ad-lib. I think she did chemistry reads with three boys, and they all came in. And I was asking the boys to tell the actress who played little Nora, that he doesn’t want her to leave Korea and that he wants her to stay in Korea and keep being friends with him. And the boy that I ended up casting, the boy who was in the movie, did such a beautiful piece of ad-lib and did such a deeply emotional performance of asking her to stay. It really felt like he really wanted her to stay, and the little girl started crying.

Oh, wow.

Because she started crying and she started asking me, “Does she have to leave? Does Nora have to leave in the movie?” And then I was like, “Yes, Nora does have to leave in the movie, but you don’t have to leave. It’s O.K.” So I did have to do a chemistry read there because it’s like that deep chemistry between the two of them really is a building block for a relationship because that’s where the chemistry can really begin from. And of course, once we had their natural chemistry, Teo and Greta watched their performance [to] sort of build something on their own. So in the speakeasy scene when Nora’s poking Hae Sung into talking about [someone back in Korea], that is something that the little actress who played the young Nora, what she was doing in the chemistry read.

Oh, my gosh.

So something like that.

That’s fantastic.

Yeah.