Past Lives director needed star Greta Lee to be a little bad at speaking Korean

Past lives takes place across time and countries – and languages. Nora, the character at the center of A24’s critically acclaimed new drama, switches between her native Korean and the English she has spoken since she was 12 years old. It is clearly a bilingual film.

Making a bilingual film means accepting that the nuances of the language will likely be lost on most audiences, writer-director Celine Song tells Polygon. Nevertheless, she took great care in guiding her actors to find the right way to speak in both languages, making sure the way she pronounced words made sense for their characters.

The film follows two childhood sweethearts, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Nora (Greta Lee), over the course of their lives, revisiting them in 12-year increments. The two separate in their youth, when Nora’s family emigrates to Canada; reconnecting in their young adulthood, only to separate again due to the strain of a long-distance connection; and these days, Hae Sung visits a married Nora for a few days in New York City.

In one of the film’s most memorable scenes – the scene that picks up on what teases the puzzling introduction – Nora sits at a bar with Hae Sung and Arthur and translates for them. Arthur is learning a little Korean and Hae Sung is decent with his English, so they do manage to have a conversation when Nora is in the bathroom. But otherwise, each of the men waits as Nora talks to the other, unable to understand.

In real life, Yoo speaks English and the actors were told what the dialogue was. So by finding out how Hae Sung and Arthur speak in their non-native languages ​​and how they react to what’s being said around them, we added another layer to the acting and directing choices.

“Teo Yoo, because he speaks English, he tried to mimic the way non-English speakers, especially Korean ones, speak English,” says Song. “I thought it turned out so beautiful.”

On the other hand, Arthur has a few scenes where he tries to speak awkwardly in Korean, and it is implied that he is slowly learning the language. Magoro initially wanted to practice a bit more and get better at Korean, but Song had other ideas.

Photo: John Pack/Twenty Years Rights/A24

“I was like, No, it should be a little bad, because that’s the character. The character is trying to learn Korean,she says. “It’s not really a matter of, like, Does he speak Korean? It’s more that he’s trying, and I think that effort felt really meaningful.

But the most interesting case of language is Nora herself. She is fluent in Korean and English, switching between them depending on the context. However, there is a difference in the way she speaks Korean and the way she speaks English. For non-Korean speakers, this is subtle, a small vocal shift that may not seem significant, but Song tells us it was intentional.

“Greta’s level of Korean was perfect for the movie, I think,” explains Song. “Because she sounds like a kid when she speaks Korean, because she emigrated as a kid and she only really talks to her parents in Korean. So it made sense that she spoke Korean in a childish way.”

Photo: Jin Young Kim/Twenty Years Right

Like Magoro, Lee wanted to get better at Korean for the film. But it was not the right choice for a character who left the country and language in her youth. Song says she told Lee not to improve her Korean.

“It has to feel a bit [she is] trying to keep up with the language.”

In Past lives, language ties everything together in the film, connecting Nora’s childhood — the version of herself left behind in Korea — to her current largely English-speaking self. But even though Nora’s Korean may not be as polished, it’s still the language she subconsciously reaches for. In one suggestive scene, Nora and Arthur are in bed talking, and Arthur mentions that when she sleeps, it’s always in Korean. It’s part of her and will be forever.

Past lives is in theaters now.