Past Lives (Movie)

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      Gotham Awards 2023: ‘Past Lives’ and Lily Gladstone Win Big

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      The movie prize season kicks off with honors for the A24 drama and for the star of “The Unknown Country” (who’s better known for “Killers of the Flower Moon”).“Past Lives,” the elegiac drama about a young Korean immigrant and the romantic path not taken, won best feature at the 33rd annual Gotham Awards, which were handed out Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.The A24 film from the writer-director Celine Song stars Greta Lee as a married writer in New York who reconnects with her childhood sweetheart from South Korea, a meeting that has her contemplating the Korean concept of inyeon, about fated connections between different people.“Thank you for believing in me when all I had was a script written in two languages,” Song said to the cast and crew members lined up behind her during her acceptance speech. “Everybody on this stage is my inyeon.”Considered the first notable awards ceremony of Oscar season, the Gotham Awards have the advantage of corralling contenders while they’re still fresh, before the thank-you lists in their acceptance speeches become rote and the golden dreams of some nominees have been ground into dust.This year’s show was particularly well-positioned since the actors’ strike had, until recently, thwarted many contenders from full-scale campaigning. At the Gothams, A-list attendees like Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver were finally permitted to partake in an unabashed, shoulder-rubbing schmoozefest.As a harbinger of future Oscar success, the Gothams can be a mixed bag. Two of their last three best-feature winners, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Nomadland,” went on to win top honors at the Academy Awards, but the Gothams are chosen by small juries that consist of a handful of film insiders, while the Oscars are voted on by around 10,000 people.The Gothams also tend to lean indie: Though the $35 million budget cap for eligibility was waived this year, jurors only found blockbuster representation for “Barbie” star Ryan Gosling, nominated for outstanding supporting performance. The Gothams’ adoption of gender-neutral categories have reduced the acting races from four to two — here, there are only categories for lead and supporting performance — while also expanding the list of nominees in each acting category from five to a somewhat unruly 10.Still, it never hurts to be seen winning, and the Gothams offer contenders a high-profile place to break out of the pack and deliver a memorable speech.One unique example of that was the Gothams win for Lily Gladstone, who triumphed in the lead-performance category not for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” her big-budget breakthrough, but for her role in the indie “The Unknown Country,” about a woman who embarks on a road trip after the grandmother she was caring for passes away.“At the heart of it, we have Native voices, because Morrisa shot reality,” said Gladstone, praising writer-director Morrisa Maltz. “You listened, like Marty did.”The supporting-performance award went to an overcome Charles Melton, the former “Riverdale” star at the burning heart of the Todd Haynes drama “May December.” The Korean American actor was one of many Asian winners at the Gothams, which also handed out TV awards to the Netflix limited series “Beef” and one of its lead performers, Ali Wong.“Anatomy of a Fall,” the Justine Triet courtroom drama that won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, took home best international feature and best screenplay for its examination of a marriage after a man dies in a family’s remote home in the French Alps. The award for breakthrough director went to A.V. Rockwell, the filmmaker behind the mother-son drama “A Thousand and One.”“I really did not see this coming,” Rockwell said, tearing up as she talked about the fight to make her first film as a Black woman. “Just to be frank, it is very hard to tell a culturally specific story when you look like this.”Though most of the show ran smoothly, presenter Robert De Niro was visibly irritated when a portion of his speech during a tribute to “Killers of the Flower Moon” was “cut out, and I didn’t know about it,” the actor said. Peeved not to find it in full on the Telepromptr, he doubled back and read it on his own.“In Florida, young students are taught that slaves developed skills that could be applied for their personal benefit,” De Niro said. “The entertainment industry isn’t immune to this festering disease: The Duke, John Wayne, famously said of Native Americans, ‘I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.’”De Niro also used his speech to criticize Donald Trump, a frequent bête noire of the actor: “Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal,” he said. “But with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows disrespect, for example, by using ‘Pocahontas’ as a slur.”De Niro noted that he had planned to wrap his speech by thanking the Gothams and Apple, the studio behind “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but had now changed his mind: “I don’t feel like thanking them at all for what they did. How dare they do that, actually.”In addition to the competitive honors, the Gothams paid tribute to Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper, Greta Gerwig, Michael Mann and George C. Wolfe.Here is a complete list of winners:Best feature: “Past Lives”Outstanding lead performance: Lily Gladstone, “The Unknown Country”Outstanding supporting performance: Charles Melton, “May December”Best documentary feature: “Four Daughters”Best international feature: “Anatomy of a Fall”Best screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall”Breakthrough director: A.V. RockwellBreakthrough series (over 40 minutes): “A Small Light”Breakthrough series (under 40 minutes): “Beef”Outstanding performance in a new series: Ali Wong, “Beef” More

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      ‘Past Lives’ and Lily Gladstone Win Big at the Gotham Awards

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      The movie prize season kicks off with honors for the A24 drama and for the star of “The Unknown Country” (who’s better known for “Killers of the Flower Moon”).“Past Lives,” the elegiac drama about a young Korean immigrant and the path not taken, won best feature as the 33rd annual Gotham Awards were handed out Monday night in New York.The ceremony was not without controversy. As Robert De Niro was paying tribute to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” in which he co-starred, the actor said his anti-Trump comments had been removed from his speech without his knowledge when it was added to the Telepromptr. “The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out, I didn’t know about it,” he told the audience at Cipriani Wall Street. “And I want to read it.” He went on to note that “history isn’t history anymore, truth is not truth, even facts are being replaced by alternative facts.”But the evening largely stayed focused on the films themselves, like “Past Lives,” from Celine Song. It stars Greta Lee as a married writer in New York who reconnects with her childhood sweetheart from South Korea.Outstanding lead performance went to Lily Gladstone but not for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” her big-budget breakthrough. She was honored for her turn in “The Unknown Country,” about a woman who embarks on a road trip after the grandmother she was caring for passes away.Other winners included Charles Melton, the former “Riverdale” star at the burning heart of the Todd Haynes drama “May December.”“Anatomy of a Fall,” the Justine Triet courtroom drama that won the top prize at Cannes, took home best international feature and best screenplay for its examination of a marriage after a man dies in a family’s remote home in the French Alps.The prizes, sponsored by the Gotham Film & Media Institute, serve as the kickoff to the film awards season, which culminates in the Oscars next year. In addition to the competitive honors, the Gothams paid tribute to Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper, Greta Gerwig, Michael Mann and George C. Wolfe.Here is a complete list of winners:Best feature: “Past Lives”Outstanding lead performance: Lily Gladstone, “The Unknown Country”Outstanding supporting performance: Charles Melton, “May December”Best documentary feature: “Four Daughters”Best international feature: “Anatomy of a Fall”Best screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall”Breakthrough director: A.V. RockwellBreakthrough series (over 40 minutes): “A Small Light”Breakthrough series (under 40 minutes): “Beef”Outstanding performance in a new series: Ali Wong, “Beef” More

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      What Would Strikes Do to Oscar Season?

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      The delay of some big titles, like “Dune: Part Two,” has ramifications for coming releases like “May December” and “Killers of the Flower Moon.”Three years after the pandemic forced the majority of Oscar season to take place on Zoom, Hollywood may be facing another circumscribed awards circuit.Dual strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America have already had a significant effect on this year’s movie calendar: Studios have opted to push several big theatrical releases like “Dune: Part Two” to 2024, since SAG-AFTRA is prohibiting its members from promoting major-studio films amid the walkout. That same ban could radically reshape the Oscar season landscape, since awards shows and the media-blitz ecosystem built around them depend on star wattage to survive. (The strikes have already prompted the Emmys to move from September to January, and other ceremonies could be delayed, too.)So what will the season look like if the strikes continue into late fall or winter? Expect these four predictions to come to pass.Streamers will be at a major advantage.The post-pandemic theatrical landscape is already difficult enough for prestige titles: Last year, best-picture nominees “The Fabelmans,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Tár” and “Women Talking” all struggled to break out at the box office. Subtract the months of press that the stars of contending films are called upon to do, and the financial forecast for specialty films grows even more dire. If striking actors aren’t available to promote this season’s year-end titles, many studios will think twice about releasing them.Streamers don’t have the same problem, since they worry more about clicks than box office numbers. So far, Netflix, Apple and Amazon have been proceeding full speed ahead with their awards-season slates: Though the actors in streaming films like “Nyad” (with Annette Bening as the long-distance swimmer); “Saltburn” (a thriller about obsession); and “Killers of the Flower Moon” (a historical drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio) may not be free to do much press, there’s ultimately no more effective advertisement for a streamer than simply throwing big pictures of a movie star on the app’s home page.Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Because of the strike, they can’t promote the film.Apple TV+, via Associated PressDirectors are the new stars.The monthslong awards circuit can raise a filmmaker’s profile considerably: Near the end of their seasons, auteurs like Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) and Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) were as recognizable as movie stars, and often just as mobbed at awards shows. Still, if the actors strike continues for several more months, studios will need to rely even more on their directors, since they may be the sole representatives of their films who are available for big profiles, audience Q. and A.s and ceremonies.Well-established auteurs like Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”) will be at a particular advantage here, as will new-school academy favorites like Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”) and Emerald Fennell (“Saltburn”). The latter two have a significant side hustle as actors, which may prove appealing in a season that will lack thespian faces, though their fellow actor-turned-director Bradley Cooper will be in a bit of a bind: How can he promote “Maestro,” his forthcoming Leonard Bernstein movie, if he also stars in it?‘Barbenheimer’ could rule again.The dual release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” proved to be the cinematic event of the summer, as Gerwig’s doll comedy broke box-office records and Nolan’s biopic defied the doldrums that have recently plagued prestige dramas. Both films were already poised to be major awards contenders, but the decimation of the year-end theatrical calendar will only reinforce their dominance.For old-school voters who still prefer to support theatrical releases instead of streaming films, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” might as well be running unopposed. The punt of “Dune: Part Two” to 2024 will only further help those two films’ awards cases, as the craft categories where the first “Dune” dominated — like production design, sound, editing and visual effects — are now decidedly up for grabs.“Barbie” may have an advantage with Oscar voters who prefer to support films released in theaters.Warner Bros.Up-and-coming actors may miss out on breakthroughs.Awards season can sometimes feel like a glamorous grind, requiring stars to commit to months of near-constant interviews, actor round tables, audience Q. and A.s, and hotel-ballroom hobnobs. Still, the season is invaluable when it comes to raising an actor’s profile. Up-and-comers become A-listers through their sheer ubiquity, and some of this season’s rising stars will miss out on the career glow-up that’s possible from a prolonged awards press tour: I’m thinking of people like “May December” actor Charles Melton, who nearly steals the movie from its leading ladies, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore (who play an actress and a Mary Kay Letourneau-like teacher, respectively).Though it would be a fine line to walk, it’s possible that some of the smaller studios may seek interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA that would allow actors to do Oscar-season press. For example, A24 has secured interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA to continue shooting films since it is not among the studios the guilds are striking against. Could the company secure a similar carve-out that would allow the cast of its summer hit “Past Lives” to become awards-show fixtures? If the strikes continue and no such arrangements are possible, Oscar voters may be forced into an unprecedented position: Without all the usual noise that surrounds an awards contender, they’ll simply have to decide whether to nominate a performance based on its merit alone. What a concept! More

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      How the Strikes Will Affect Prestige Fall Films like ‘Maestro’

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      Without stars on the red carpet, prestige titles like the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro” and the Elvis Presley tale “Priscilla” may not get the push they need.With summer movie season at its midpoint, Hollywood typically begins to turn its gaze toward the fall, when a trio of major film festivals acts as the unofficial kickoff to Oscar season. Seven of the last 10 best-picture winners had their debuts at a fall festival, coming out of the gate with standing ovations and critical acclaim that helped propel them through the monthslong awards-show gantlet.But now that SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America are both on strike, could a protracted battle between the unions and the studios cause those fall launchpads to fizzle?Though the writers’ strike, which began May 2, didn’t have much of an effect on the Cannes Film Festival that month, the actors’ strike that started Friday may significantly reshape coming fests in Venice, Telluride, Colo., and Toronto. That’s because SAG-AFTRA is prohibiting members from promoting any film while the strike is on, an across-the-board ban that includes interviews, photo calls and red-carpet duties. Without those appearances, festivals will be sapped of the star power that is invaluable to raising a film’s profile.The first event that will probably be affected is the Venice Film Festival, which begins its 80th edition on Aug. 30 with the premiere of the sexy tennis comedy “Challengers,” starring Zendaya. Venice has lately rivaled Cannes for glamour and headlines, so the loss of famous actors would be a big blow. Nearly all the major moments at Venice last year were star-driven, from the viral clip of Brendan Fraser crying after the premiere of “The Whale” to the social-media scrutiny of Harry Styles and Chris Pine as they appeared to clash while promoting “Don’t Worry Darling.” (Though if there had been a strike, Florence Pugh, the star, would have had a better excuse for infamously skipping that film’s news conference.)The festival will announce its full lineup on July 25, and buzz suggests it could include highly anticipated films like Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic, “Maestro”; Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” about the relationship between Elvis Presley and his wife, Priscilla; and “The Killer,” a David Fincher thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton. Those auteurs are at least famous enough to pick up some of the promotional slack, though Cooper might be in a bind as both the director and star of “Maestro,” since any press he does could be seen as flouting SAG’s prohibition.The Telluride Film Festival, which runs Sept. 1-4 and shot to the spotlight the likes of “Lady Bird” and “Moonlight,” should be less stricken by the absence of stars: That intimate Colorado gathering is a favorite of famous attendees because they’re not required to do photo ops or media blitzes and can instead mill around like regular people.But the Toronto International Film Festival, beginning Sept. 7, is a heady 10-day affair filled with red carpets, portrait studios and press junkets that will all shrink significantly if actors are forbidden to attend. Canadian businesses are already bracing for a hit to their bottom line if the festival contracts. Organizers issued a statement of concern last week: “The impact of this strike on the industry and events like ours cannot be denied. We will continue planning for this year’s festival with the hope of a swift resolution in the coming weeks.”There is a workaround for actors to attend festivals, but it’s a slim one: Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the SAG-AFTRA negotiator, has said that “truly independent” films able to secure interim agreements with the guild could allow their stars to do media duties. Still, that’s a proviso more likely to spare the indie-focused Sundance Film Festival in January rather than fall festivals, where the biggest titles tend to hail from major studios. And if the SAG strike continues into January, it will be more than just festivals that feel the pinch.A monthslong strike would hit the awards-season ecosystem with its toughest test since Covid: If stars can’t attend ceremonies, could the events be held at all? (At least when these things were on Zoom, the nominated stars showed up.) Post-pandemic, prestige films need all the help they can get at the box office. If they can’t be sustained by awards chatter and media-happy movie stars, studios could opt to move some more vulnerable year-end titles to 2024.That could provide an awards-season advantage to streamers like Netflix, which don’t have to factor the box office into decisions on what to debut or delay. And movies that have already had a big cultural moment — like A24’s “Past Lives,” an art-house hit from June, or Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which will be released by Apple in October but received a major premiere at Cannes in May — will be better positioned to thrive this awards season than films that may not have full-fledged press tours.Will an agreement in this bitter battle be reached in time to save awards season? Even if both sides can compromise before the televised ceremonies begin, one change is likely to still be felt: Don’t expect the usual list of studio executives to be quite so effusively thanked in acceptance speeches. More

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      ‘2023 Sundance Film Festival Short Films’ Review: Small Bites’

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      From animated partygoers to real families embracing a name, this basket of goodies includes seven titles, among them comedy, tragedy and documentary.Every year, features from the Sundance Film Festival can become critical favorites — “Past Lives” is a notable example — but the fest’s shorter works can fade away. The “2023 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour” brings a seven-film omnibus to cinemas across the country, and Kayla Abuda Galang’s “When You Left Me on That Boulevard” alone is reason enough to see it.This lovely and funny short portrays a Filipino American family’s Thanksgiving get-together through the eyes of Ly, an introverted teenager who’s a daydreamer even before she gets stoned with her cousins. It’s a film that contains both bustling images and delicate vibes, inner-voice stillness and subtle soundscapes, all of which can flourish in a movie theater.Galang seems especially drawn to dialing into private spaces in social situations, for example when Ly talks about her boyfriend as if to herself, until a cut reveals she’s surrounded by family members. Ly can sound endearingly oblivious, but instead of having the actor play that tendency for cheap laughs, the writer-director picks up on the warmth in the room.Galang also looks out for different ways of showing how the family is together, whether it’s karaoke — the short’s title comes from a song Ly’s aunt belts out — or a cool split shot of kids and parents hanging out on either side of a wall. If past Sundance collections are any guide, this short might preview a feature, and Galang’s immersive exploration of inner and outer spaces makes one eager to watch what comes next.Family bonds weather transitions in a number of the shorts. “Parker,” from Catherine Hoffman and Sharon Liese, the sole documentary in this selection, teases out a rich, arduous history of Black experience in a decision by members of a family in Kansas City to adopt the same surname. Interviews with the parents and their children show the love, and the fears and trauma, that can be inscribed in a name, and the peace of mind and unity promised by their choice.Resembling vérité nonfiction, Crystal Kayiza’s “Rest Stop” follows a Ugandan-American mother traveling with her three children to join her estranged partner. Kayiza dwells on scenes that a feature might relegate to a montage, the better to sit with feeling unsettled and tired and scattered, but pushing ahead to another future. Liz Sargent’s “Take Me Home” is also a portrait in becoming, as an overwhelmed, cognitively disabled woman (played by Sargent’s real-life sister, Anna) sends an S.O.S. to her sister after years of relying on their ailing mother.Comedies are well-represented in the collection: “Pro Pool” feels like a trailer for itself as it churns through retail workplace humor, while the stop-motion animation “Inglorious Liaisons” fondly portrays a goofy teen party, wherein people have light switches for faces. But Aemilia Scott’s shrewdly written, well-cast opener to the program, “Help Me Understand,” turns a focus group of women testing detergent scents into a nervy experiment in hung-jury dynamics. Shifting gears from satire to a double-edged dissection of point of view, it’s a snappy way of prepping viewers for the multiplicity of voices to follow.2023 Sundance Film Festival Short Film TourNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Past Lives’ Review: Longing for a Future

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      Celine Song’s film debut, starring Greta Lee, follows two childhood friends who share a wistful kind of love across two decades and two continents.“Past Lives” is a wistful what-if story about two people, the children they were and the adults they become. The movie follows them through the years and across assorted reunions, separations and continents as well as milestones momentous and ordinary. It’s a tale of friendship, love, regret and what it means to truly live here and now. In a sense it is a time-travel movie, because even as the two characters keep moving forward, they remain inexorably tethered to the past, which means it’s also a story about everyday life.“Past Lives” centers on Nora (played as an adult by a terrific and subtle Greta Lee) and a boy named Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), though mostly it’s about her. The two first meet as schoolmates in their home city, Seoul. They’re charming — they’re children — and close. “He’s manly,” Nora, then called Na Young, tells her amused mother. “I will probably marry him.” Soon after the movie opens, the kids are walking home shoulder-to-shoulder, her eyes downcast. He’s received higher marks at school, which, in a portent of her later-life ambition, has upset her. Hae Sung comforts her because he’s a nice boy; he will become a nice man, but by then she will be long gone.This is the filmmaking debut of the Korean-Canadian-American playwright Celine Song (“Endlings”), who also wrote the script. Its narrative shape is fairly familiar: It opens in the present and then flashes back 24 years to when Nora was a girl in pigtails whose family was about to immigrate to Canada. In unfussy, naturalistic scenes and with onscreen text that marks the passage of time, Song follows Nora and Hae Sung as they go their different ways and reunite online a dozen years later as young adults. After a brief virtual reunion, they part ways. Another 12 years pass and they reconnect a second time.The movie’s modesty — its intimacy, human scale, humble locations and lack of visual oomph — is one of its strengths. The characters live in homes that are pleasant yet ordinary, the kind that you can imagine hanging out in, the kind you want to hang out in. There are few big, look-at-me details, though you might notice a poster for Jacques Rivette’s 1974 classic “Céline and Julie Go Boating” in Nora’s father’s home office in Seoul. Without making too much of this cinephile allusion, there’s a moment in the Rivette that does seem germane: “Your future is behind you,” one character says to another, which could serve as a tagline for this movie.Song draws you into her characters’ worlds seamlessly. As “Past Lives” develops, she toggles between Nora and Hae Sung at home and out and about, lightly sketching in how their everyday lives have developed. Even so, Nora — and Lee’s delicately calibrated performance — remains the movie’s gravitational center. By the time Nora is in her 20s, she is living in New York and has become a playwright. On a whim, she looks up Hae Sung on Facebook and discovers that he’s still in South Korea and has also searched for her. The two are soon regularly video chatting until Nora decides she needs to commit to her life in New York.These scenes of Nora and Hae Sung reconnecting are pleasant, partly because Lee and Yoo are both nice to spend time with. But as the days give way to one night after another, this interlude can also feel drifty and even a little innocuous, almost like filler. That’s partly because although Yoo is awfully nice to look at, and while Song continues to add in details about Hae Sung’s life in South Korea, the character never takes deep root in the story the way that Nora does. For much of it, he is effectively a ghostly figure, a beautiful specter on a laptop screen whose open face hides very little, including Hae Sung’s vulnerability and yearning.All this feels as specific, intentional and meaningful as the sight of different lovers embracing all around Nora and Hae Sung when, another 12 years later, they finally reconnect in person in New York. By then, each has settled into their respective lives, have separate histories, have made different memories. They have distinct personalities and ways of taking up space, and each has had a serious relationship, Nora’s with her husband, Arthur (John Magaro, wonderful). Like Hae Sung, Arthur has a sweet, transparent face that hides little, including the hurt that Nora sometimes causes him, one difference being that he actually lives with her.It’s important to Song’s overall design that one of the most crucial and extended sequences in “Past Lives” takes place not long after Nora breaks off with Hae Sung when they’re young adults. She’s rocked by their encounter, but she is soon en route to a writers retreat, an emblem of the horizons first glimpsed in her girlhood. Here, for the only time in the movie, Song lingers over a physical space, in this case a handsome, sunlit country house, a home. Nora lingers too in these rooms, and shortly after she settles in, another writer — Arthur — follows. Song stages and shoots his arrival from Nora’s room, the camera pointing through the open window as she lies asleep in her bed. She misses Arthur’s entrance, but soon after, Nora emerges from her room, awake in a present that — for the first time — feels like the future.Past LivesRated PG-13. In English and Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Meet Greta Lee, the Star of “Past Lives”

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      She’s known for playing offbeat characters in “Russian Doll,” “High Maintenance” and “Girls,” but Greta Lee is winning raves for her restrained performance in “Past Lives.” It almost didn’t happen.“I’ve played a lot of larger-than-life people,” Greta Lee said. “This is entirely different. I was really attracted to what that could be, and whether or not I could pull it off.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesGreta Lee shines at playing the entrancing oddball, the scene-stealing weirdo you can’t take your eyes off of.Over the years, the actress has channeled Soojin, an entitled, self-absorbed gallerist who thinks she’s poor but isn’t (“Girls”); Hae Won, a nail salon technician who can party with the best of them, in this case, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (“Sisters”); and Maxine, the free spirit on “Russian Doll” caught in an inescapable time loop with her best friend, played by Natasha Lyonne.What Lee hasn’t gotten to play much are characters who are, to use her word, restrained.For many actors, restraint is not necessarily something to strive for. “A lot of times, as performers, we’re fighting this unspoken desire to show you can do something,” she said. “To show that you understand the assignment.”Audiences will get to see a bit more restraint and a lot more of what Lee can do in the A24 drama “Past Lives,” which opens June 2. After years of making the most of small parts, the actress’s talents have long been there to see for anyone with eyeballs, whether she was performing on Broadway (briefly) or in some of TV’s most groundbreaking comedies. All that was needed for Lee to move up was the right role — in this case, her first leading role, one that almost didn’t come her way.In “Past Lives,” she plays Nora, a Korean Canadian playwright who reunites with the childhood sweetheart she left behind in Seoul when her family immigrated 24 years before. The film also stars Teo Yoo (“Love to Hate You”) as Hae Sung, the man who still wonders what might have been, and John Magaro (“Not Fade Away”), as Nora’s husband Arthur, a writer forced to wonder what might have been, too, when Hae Sung comes to New York for a short but affecting visit.Teo Yoo and Lee in “Past Lives.” Initially the roles went to other performers.A24In many ways, Nora is about as far from Lee’s roster of scene-stealing roles as you can imagine: measured and still rather than riotous or offbeat; the humor, when it comes, wry. It’s a breakthrough performance in a film that has already earned rave reviews (The Times described it as “a gorgeous, glowing, aching thing”) after it premiered at Sundance and played the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The Los Angeles Times called her turn a “career-making performance,” while The Hollywood Reporter singled out the “extraordinary depths” of her portrayal of Nora.“I’ve played a lot of larger-than-life people,” Lee said. “This is entirely different. I was really attracted to what that could be, and whether or not I could pull it off.”The role almost eluded Lee, an experience she related one afternoon in a coffee shop in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. “I felt absolutely certain that it was not going to go my way,” she recalled.IF NORA IS NOTHING LIKE many of Lee’s previous party-girl characters, neither is Lee herself. She’s a mother, for starters, of two young boys with her husband, Russ Armstrong.On set, “Greta is like a Hunter S. Thompson-meets-Fellini character,” Natasha Lyonne said in an interview. “She’s a total original.”And while Lee’s characters can seem infinitely too cool to be seen with you or your friends, she herself isn’t above getting excited about all sorts of things, including how kind and receptive everyone has been about this latest movie of hers. “I’m going to show you,” she said, pulling out her cellphone. She played a tiny clip she had shot on her phone of the blocks-long line at a recent screening of “Past Lives.” “It keeps going! Still going. Still going. Isn’t this completely wild?”Lee, now 40, was born in Los Angeles and spent most of her childhood here. The daughter of Korean immigrants and the oldest of three, she experienced much of her early life as a series of firsts. “I was the first kid to be an American citizen in the family, the first to go to school here, just navigating all these things,” she said. “I always had a burning fire to prove something, either to myself, or to whatever authority figure there was in my life.”Growing up, she loved sports (“there are Olympic wrestlers on my dad’s side”) and musical performance. She played the piano, studied opera, sang Liza Minnelli numbers at the local mall, took modern-dance classes, competed in classical music festivals (and won). “I know a lot of Italian arias and German art songs,” she said.After high school, Lee attended Northwestern University in the hopes of going into musical theater. “Back then it was ‘Miss Saigon,’ ‘South Pacific,’ ‘The King and I,’” she said. “It’s kind of sad to think about now. It was so limited in what it could be. But it was still enough for me to feel like there was something here that I deeply want to be a part of.”For a time, she hustled for any type of role or gig. “I was meeting rejection and obstacles, and I remember feeling constantly like I was falling behind,” she said, recalling the five-year stretch when she booked just a few TV episodes.Still, all that auditioning paid off. In 2010, Lee found herself on Broadway in a revival of “La Bête,” a comedy in iambic pentameter set in the 17th century and starring David Hyde Pierce and Joanna Lumley. Even then, she was multitasking. “I would do that play, and then change out of my corset and walk around the corner to MTV’s ‘TRL’ studios, where I was a VJ.”Supporting parts in celebrated series like “High Maintenance,” “Girls” and “Inside Amy Schumer” followed. In 2019, Lee landed regular roles on the streaming series “Russian Doll,” which finished its second season last month, and “The Morning Show,” which has been renewed for a fourth season.“I think the path I took, as an Asian American woman, was different from what is conventional,” Lee said. “Certain points in my life during this journey didn’t always make sense to other people. But it makes so much sense to me now.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLee read the script for “Past Lives” the following year and was immediately captivated. “It really stood out in terms of what a romantic drama could be,” she said. “It’s not a conventional love story or love triangle. And the woman at the center of the story is really different from others I’ve seen in other films.”Not long after that first read, “I got a phone call from an assistant, asking if I was available for an important meeting” at a restaurant in the Village, she said. “I assumed I had gotten the job!” But the assistant had the wrong number, and it turned out the message, unrelated to “Past Lives,” was for Greta Gerwig.In fact, Lee wasn’t even being considered for the part. For months, Celine Song, the writer and director of “Past Lives,” had been looking at other Noras, other Hae Sungs. “They cast it with two other people,” Lee said.According to Song, the oversight had little to do with Lee herself. The film’s story is loosely based on the true-life reunion of Song, her American husband and her Korean school pal, which took place when the director was 29. “When you’re young, you think that being 29 is so interesting and cool and meaningful,” Song said. “So I was trying to find somebody at 30, or even in their twenties, and Greta, of course, was in her late 30s.”“It was really stupid,” Song admitted.AFTER SONG CAME TO HER SENSES, she contacted Lee. A year had passed since Lee had first read the script, but she still remembered it: her soul-mate film, she called it. Could she meet with Song, via Zoom, that day? After a video audition that stretched on for two and a half hours, with Lee reading key scenes as Song played the two male leads (“Celine makes an excellent Arthur and Hae Sung,” Lee said), Song offered Lee the part on the spot.The film began shooting in summer 2021. To help the actors convey the feeling of being reunited with someone after 24 years, when you’ve only communicated over Skype, Song kept Lee and Yoo apart as much as possible. “She told us, you guys can’t touch,” Lee said.For Yoo, “during the rehearsal process, the instinct is to say goodbye naturally, with a hug,” he said. “And Celine was like, no, no, no, you guys, no touching.” I’m allowed to touch and hug, she told them, but Yoo and Lee got shooed away when they tried.Song insisted that the actors were all in, and that she never had to scold them to keep them in line. “Is that what they’re saying?” she asked, with a laugh. “No, no. I think they wanted to go along with the trick.”Of course the actress balked, Lee said, at least at first. “I was like, we’re all professionals here, and there’s a question of, how much of this needs to be actualized? We’re acting. But I think we all wanted to support her vision of this, and I was also curious to see how this might affect the process.”“It was really visceral, that first moment when we hug each other,” Yoo said. “So I was glad that we were able to capture that, and the audience gets to experience it.”Much of “Past Lives” was filmed in New York, as Nora shows Hae Sung around the city during a particularly dreary, rain-soaked week. The shoot was a reunion for the cast — not with, say, a long-lost sweetheart, but with the city itself. Song and the three leads had all lived in New York when they were coming up. Lee and Yoo had spent years in the East Village as struggling actors: Yoo, above a pizza joint at the corner of Avenue A and St. Marks Place; Lee, above a Thai restaurant in a small apartment she shared with three other women.“I was the first kid to be an American citizen in the family, the first to go to school here, just navigating all these things,” Lee said. “I always had a burning fire to prove something.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“We were shooting on the actual streets I lived on in the East Village when I was just starting out as a young 20-something, really desperate for work and trying to make a living,” Lee said. “It’s embarrassing to put it this way, but I guess it did feel somewhat like destiny.”In addition to “Past Lives,” Lee returns this fall as the network executive Stella Bak in the third season of “The Morning Show.” “I think people are really going to be excited about her arc on this season,” Lee said.She’s also set to appear in “Problemista,” an A24 comedy written, directed and starring Julio Torres. Greta plays a painter unfairly maligned by an art critic (Tilda Swinton). The part is small, Torres said, but memorable. “Greta has a way of staying with you even when you haven’t seen a lot of her, which is a very powerful thing to have,” he said.Right now, however, Lee’s focus is on “Past Lives.” All those other experiences she’s gone through, the stage work and revivals, the sketches and half-hour comedies, the TV dramas and voice actor work, she said, have all helped prepare her for this moment.“I think the path I took, as an Asian American woman, was different from what is conventional,” she said. “Certain points in my life during this journey didn’t always make sense to other people. But it makes so much sense to me now.”“I feel like I’ve been working really hard,” she added, “to make sure I was ready for the day when a role like Nora Moon would come my way.” More