Celine Song’s follow up to the beautifully soul destroying Past Lives is here. Equally bleak in some respects, Materialists follows Lucy, a successful New York matchmaker as she deals in single peoples’ long lists of non-negotiables.
From height and salaries, right down to size and even race, Materialists shines a light on how dire modern day dating is, and how caught up we’ve become in numbers over substance and, you know, actually falling in love with a person for who they are. Cineworld sat down with director and writer Celine Song to explore her inspiration for her new movie.
A matchmaker in her own past life (do you see what we did there?!), Celine Song told Cineworld how her experiences shaped Materialists.
“I was inspired by the time I actually worked as a matchmaker, which I did in my twenties for about six months – not very long. But I think I learned more about people and what’s in their hearts in those six months than I did in any other part of my life. And I think that, walking away from that job, I always knew I was going to write something about it.”
More romantic existential spiral than romantic comedy, there is a cynical undertone to Materialists that is both refreshing and amusing in its own right. Touching on this with Celine, we had to know if the kinds of sometimes dark desires and requests clients had for their matchmakers were based on truth.
In response, Celine said, “People are more honest with the matchmaker than they are with their therapist.” Considering some of the characters requests… Big yikes!
Celine continued, “I think that the most important thing is that I think, in our hearts, the thing that we feel um very deeply, more than anything, is that we actually want to feel freed from human loneliness. And I think that love is the only cure to loneliness which is why we participate in this very difficult thing which is dating.”
Singing to the choir, gal.
You can watch our full interview with Celine Song below, in which she soothes us with more of her whimsy on love.
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