Celine Song’s remarkable Past Lives

Playwright Celine Song makes her feature directorial debut with Past Lives, a work of remarkable delicacy and humor about fate, connections, and the narratives we event for our lives. Drawing on Song’s own background as a Korean-Canadian immigrant who ends up a writer in New York, Past Lives tells the story of childhood sweethearts Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who are separated abruptly at age twelve when Nora and her family immigrate to Canada. They lose track of each other until twelve years later, when social media and smartphones make global connection and communication possible. They fight through first-gen video calling and spotty internet connections to speak almost every day, until Nora decides they should stop talking for a bit, thus ending their undeclared relationship. Jumping forward another twelve years, Nora is married to a fellow writer, Arthur (John Magaro), and Hae Sung comes to New York just to see her.  ...Full Story