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Words by Mariela Summerhays.
Celine Song isn’t interested in answers so much as she is in questions. “I’m always interrogating everything I’m curious about and that is a mystery to me. Always,” the filmmaker says. “I have to believe that the thing I’m making knows more than me and that I have something to learn in making that thing.”
For Song, the greatest mystery is love. “It’s been a mystery since ancient times,” she says. “It’s going to be a mystery forever — so, because of that, I don’t think that I will ever stop asking questions about it.”
In 2023’s Past Lives her tender, semi-autobiographical debut film, Song introduced global audiences to the Korean concept of inyeon, the invisible thread connecting destined souls. Premiering to acclaim at Sundance, where it won Best Feature, the film follows Nora Moon (Greta Lee) as her childhood connection with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) resurfaces, challenging the quiet intimacy of her marriage to Arthur (John Magaro). The film would go on to earn five Golden Globe nominations, three BAFTA nominations and two Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
Now comes Song’s much-awaited sophomore film, Materialists. Where Past Lives was a meditation on the mystery of inyeon — eternal and fated — Materialists focuses on the contradictions of finding true love in the modern world.
The film follows Lucy (played by Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker whose talent for pairing couples contradicts the reality of her life, where she is drawn to both her former flame John (Chris Evans), who is a struggling actor, and Harry (Pedro Pascal), a charming financier who appears to be her perfect match.
Like Past Lives — which was inspired by a real encounter between Song, her husband and her childhood sweetheart — Materialists was born from real experience. “I actually worked as a matchmaker for a short time — over six months, back in the 2010s, when I was working as a playwright. Being a playwright does not pay so well,” Song says, laughing.
“So I needed a day job.” As a matchmaker tasked with finding people their ideal partner and, ultimately, love, Song found clients exceedingly demanding, listing partner preferences in numbers: height, weight, income.
“That was very interesting, the modification and objectification of each other in pursuit of something that is meant to be this beautiful, holy, entirely meaningful thing,” she says. “To find the love of your life, you’re going to think about how tall you want them to be? How fit you want them to be? But we all know that that’s just not how love works.”
Another question, another opportunity to have something about love revealed. She smiles. “That contradiction — between this talk about who we want to be with and how love works — was something that I always knew I wanted to write about.”
Materialists is in cinemas now. Watch the trailer here.
The post Everything Materialists Director Celine Song Knows About Love appeared first on ELLE.
