Celine Song, the writer-director of Sundance 2023 breakout Past Lives, had a plan to catch her actors in the moment. While filming the movie, which premiered at the festival on January 21, the first-time director didn’t let John Magaro (First Cow) and Teo Yoo (Decision to Leave), who play men in relationships with the same woman (Greta Lee) at different times, talk to each other at all. Even during Zoom calls, the men had to turn their cameras off, according to Yoo. “When they meet for the first time in the film, we were rolling, and that’s the take that’s in the film,†Song explained. “There’s a lot of buildup within them … There’s a lot of expectation, and also there’s jealousy.†Even Lee wasn’t allowed to touch Yoo while rehearsing their characters’ reunion, so when they hug for the first time, the actors’ “visceral†anticipation mirrored the tension the characters felt. Turns out to use real emotions, actors don’t need to send each other rats. Above, Song and her actors discuss what it was like being kept apart along with:
➽ The real-life dinner that inspired Song’s script
âž½ Why Lee thinks there’s more to her character than “which guy she ends up withâ€