Celine Song’s first film, “Past Lives,” is one of the most acclaimed movies of the year. A delicately hushed debut feature that has had critics raving about it ever since its world premiere at Sundance this past January.
It turns out that the film that made Song want to become a director couldn’t be more different than “Past Lives”. Song tells NME that Quentin Tarantino’s irreverent World War II adventure “Inglourious Basterds” is the film that changed her life:
“The complete irreverence of it felt so freeing to me in a way. Watching it and going, ‘you can do that, you can change history, you can treat history like it doesn’t matter at all. You can just burn it all down!’
Give than Song’s ”Past Lives” is such an artfully subdued and unshowy statement, I’m somewhat surprised by her name-checking of Tarantino’s absurdist WWII statement. Other films mentioned by Song, that have influenced her, include “Equilibrium,” “The Matrix,” “The Godfather” and “Pulp Fiction.”