Some filmmakers are not too fond of press tours and the festival circuit, and just grin and
bear it as part of their promotional duties once their film has been put out into the world. Celine Song is
not one of them. When we meet in Karlovy Vary, where her feature debut Past Lives is
screening in the Horizons section, she’s enthusiastic about the long journey
this U.S. indie first embarked on back in January, when it premiered at Sundance. “I love hearing
people’s reactions in different countries”, she explains. “It first hit me at the Berlinale: this is
not just an American movie getting released in the U.S., it’s playing everywhere.” In fact, the
movie opened domestically in the States on June 23, a few days before its Czech debut, and is likely to
show up at other events for the rest of the year.
Being in Karlovy Vary is especially emotional since the festival also honored the film’s main
producer Christine Vachon, a true legend in the field who has worked with Todd Haynes,
John Cameron Mitchell, Mary Harron and Paul Schrader, among others. Song agrees with
that description: “She’s an amazing legend!” she exclaims joyfully. “It’s been a privilege and an
honor to work with her. I knew that as a first-time director I needed a strong producer to
provide guidance throughout the process, and Christine has decades of experience working in
independent film in New York City. So whenever I had a problem that seemed huge, she
would know exactly what to say to make it look tiny.”
Not that there were many problems on the set to begin with. Coming from a theater
background, Song was well versed in areas such as blocking and working with actors. She
elaborates: “The key thing was talking to everyone, making sure we were all on the same
page in terms of what each scene was about: the characters, or an object, or a location.” The
latter proved vital when scouting the perfect location to use as the apartment where the
female protagonist Nora lives with her husband Arthur. “I didn’t want it to look perfect,
because in real life the most romantic conversations take place in shitty bedrooms”, she says,
referring to a key scene in the movie. “So that was my goal, to find a place that was
believable.”
The notion of believability is also why Arthur’s role is more rounded than a generic third wheel character , who becomes a crowd when his wife reconnects with a
childhood friend/old flame. Song based the script on personal experiences, and the opening
scene, in which the three main characters are at a bar and we hear other people trying to figure
out who they are to each other, is a fairly exact recreation of real events. She explains it like this:
“We’ve seen plenty of bad marriages on screen. I wanted to show a good marriage, where the
good part is not that it’s a perfect relationship, because there’s always a part of your partner
that you will never be able to access, but they’re there for each other.”
Past Lives won three accolades at the Hollywood Critics Midseason Awards for Best Indie Film, Best Screenplay and Best Actress (for Greta Lee.)
