Celine Song Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

The stars of Past Lives are stepping out to promote their new movie.

How long does it take to find your soulmate? Two people face the question time and time again in “Past Lives.” The film focuses on childhood friends split up by things beyond their control. Years later, they connect once again only to find more time must pass before seeing each other.

Jessica Kiang It is not unprecedented to have a Sundance-premiering film play in the Berlinale competition. Yet director Celine Song’s journey with “Past Lives,” which received raves in Park City and makes its international bow in Berlin, feels like a fresh phenomenon. She’s a first-time filmmaker. Her movie has no big names. And it is unapologetically personal. Breakthrough status suits Song, who told Variety, “Everything I do, I have to believe it is the first time I’m doing that kind of thing.” Her recent resumé bears that out: Since her Off Broadway play “Endlings” closed early due to the pandemic, she has written for Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time” and mounted a production of Chekhov’s “The Seagull” entirely within the Sims 4 universe on Twitch. 

Spanning three time periods and two continents, “Past Lives,” the directorial debut of Celine Song (“Endlings”), tells the story of two childhood friends and sweethearts pulled apart by time, circumstance, and fate. They come back together and end in a way that might subvert the romantic fantasies of the audience — but this only shows the important roles people play in our lives, even if it’s not what we expected.  READ MORE: 25 Most Anticipated Films At The Sundance Film Festival Disembodied voices start us off in “Past Lives,” making guesses at who Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), and Arthur (John Magaro) are to each other as they sit at an NYC bar.

The word “romantic” doesn’t have much place in cinema these days, serving mostly as a modifier for “comedy”. The term “women’s picture” has also passed out of favor since its ’40s heyday, regardless of the fact that the films that exemplified it usually featured strong female characters and almost always pushed back at the pressures of male-run society. With her feature debut Past Lives, which screened to a double standing ovation this week in the Premieres strand at Sundance, playwright Celine Song has killed two birds with one stone, creating an elegant and unexpectedly mesmerizing character piece that speaks profoundly to the concept of love in the modern age while using an intelligent and ambitious, but still very relatable woman to do so.

The Sundance Film Festival has announced further additions to its lineup for 2023, including five more features that will there make their world premieres, and four award-winners from years past to receive encore special screenings.

EXCLUSIVE: Jojo T. Gibbs (Fresh, Twenties), Javicia Leslie (Batwoman, God Friended Me), Chido Nwokocha (Tyler Perry’s Sistas, Destroyer), Stephanie Shepherd (Dave) and Michael Roark (Bennett’s War, Driven) have signed on to the Amazon Original film Something from Tiffany’s, based on Melissa Hill’s novel of the same name, from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and Amazon Studios.

EXCLUSIVE: Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are set to star in A24’s Past Lives, from writer-director Celine Song, with filming set to begin later this year. John Magaro also is on board in a key supporting role.