Celine Song mines from a past life forPast Lives, a stunning feature film debut about fate and connection.
I had become a bridge or a portal between them.
I just thought that there was something really interesting going on there."
Greta Lee, John Magaro, and Teo Yoo in ‘Past Lives’.Jon Pack/A24
That evening set the stage forPast Lives, a searing romance drama fromA24spanning time and continents.
Lee recalls feeling “completely knocked over” by the script.
I immediately fell in love with it."
Teo Yoo and Greta Lee in ‘Past Lives’.Jon Pack/A24
Those particular sequences without dialogue, Lee admits, felt “very exposing.”
“We were strangers,” she says of Yoo.
Those are things that we took really seriously.
Seung Ah Moon as young Nora and Seung Min Yim as young Hae Sung in ‘Past Lives’.Jon Pack/A24
Those moments of silence are very exposing as actors.
It’s very naked.
you’re able to’t hide behind dialogue.
Greta Lee and Teo Yoo in ‘Past Lives’.Jon Pack/A24
you’re free to’t hide behind anything.
you’re free to see everything that happens in silence."
Yoo does not shy away from such unguarded moments.
“InPulp Fiction, Mia [talks about] uncomfortable silences [and being] comfortable in uncomfortable silences.
That always stuck with me,” he says.
“I always felt rather comfortable in a vulnerable space.
“It’s a very theater thing: We’re hugging all the time.
You say hi, you hug.
You say bye, you hug.
I remember at the time feeling actively resistant to that idea.
I just felt like, ‘Oh gosh, that’s so method!'”
However, “it really opened up our different ideas on the physicality of longing,” Lee concedes.
“I was feeling connected to the way that my childhood friend remembered me as a 12-year-old.
I was fascinated by the contradiction.
That little girl is gone, but also, part of you is always that little girl.”
Past Livesis currently playing in select theaters and expands nationwide on June 23.
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