Pedro Pascal, Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans Star in a Smart, Modern Rom-Com Surprise!

In 2023, movie buffs worldwide became familiar with the name Celine Song, an American playwright of South Korean descent who successfully transitioned into filmmaking with “Past Lives.” This poignant tale of enduring thwarted love, partly inspired by her own experiences, allowed viewers to reflect on their regrets and missed opportunities. Following a heart-wrenching ending, two Oscar nominations (Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay), and numerous year-end accolades, the director and screenwriter is back. This time, she’s armed with a high-profile cast (Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans replace Greta Lee and Teo Yoo) but maintains her focus on the complexities of love and a modern take on the romantic comedy genre.

Released on July 2, “Materialists” tracks the journey of an ambitious matchmaker (Dakota Johnson) caught between a man who ticks all her boxes (Pedro Pascal, in one of his three films this month) and her less-than-ideal ex (Chris Evans). At first glance, the plot may seem typical, but Celine Song handles it with intelligence and a refreshing twist by subverting the genre’s conventions. This approach certainly warranted a discussion with the filmmaker, who remains as intriguing as her films.

AlloCiné: During “Past Lives,” you mentioned it started from a personal place for you. So naturally, I wondered if “Materialists” was personal too, and how?

Celine Song: (laughs) Absolutely! I believe anytime you tell a human story about everyday life and the extraordinary thing we get to do, which is to love someone, there’s always a personal element. This film was inspired by the time I spent as a matchmaker in my twenties. It was a brief six-month stint. I did it as a survival job because I was a playwright who couldn’t make rent in New York and needed a job to get by. So, I worked in matchmaking for about six months, and I think I learned more about human beings during that period than at any other time in my life.

People are incredibly honest with a matchmaker, more so, I think, than with their therapists. With therapists, as they discuss psychological issues, there’s a way of presenting things that isn’t as literal and material as when someone says: “I want this kind of boyfriend” or “I want this girlfriend.”

When did this chapter of your life come back to the forefront to be included in a film?

When I was doing that job. At some point, I realized that I really wanted to write something about this topic, especially since I had just gotten married. So, I knew how we talked about dating with my clients: ostensibly, it’s a game we play to find love, right? But when we discussed what mattered most to people in these encounters, I learned that it was about work, height, weight, income, age. They talked about these things, all these numbers, yet there’s something I knew to be very true about love—it’s simply not quantifiable.

I’ve always been fascinated by this, and now I’m curious to see how the French audience will receive “Materialists,” because the theme of love is very central to your cinema. It often involves lovers.

“Today, romantic movies aren’t really made for the big screen in the US anymore”

Especially in the films of the French New Wave.

Yes, particularly in the New Wave. And one thing to note is that nowadays, romantic films in the US aren’t really made for the big screen anymore. And even less so if it’s an original R-rated movie (laughs). For the mainstream commercial audience that goes to the movies, we’re somewhat unique in doing this today. “Materialists” is the only film of its kind in the US, while in France, that’s what cinema is.

Indeed, and that’s probably why the project and then the trailer for “Materialists” generated so much excitement here, because there was this feeling of seeing a film from the past.

Absolutely, because you have a connection with the romantic comedy and its history through time. The films that have inspired me the most are quite old, in fact: those by Billy Wilder, Nora Ephron, or James L. Brooks, who made great cinema about everyday life and love. That’s the approach I wanted to reproduce, adapted to 2025, because things have changed.

I was wondering what your relationship with the romantic comedy genre is, at least in the Hollywood sense. When watching your films, you seem to love it while also seeking to counter its conventions to approach it more modernly, and that’s what you seem to confirm by talking about adapting it to 2025.

It’s related to the films I’ve always loved, because it’s thanks to them that one learns to be a filmmaker and tell stories. I return to the stories I first fell in love with, and the first question to ask at that point is how can you contribute to the genre. Look for what makes sense, the most appropriate way to talk about dating and love in New York in 2025. There’s a kind of urgency, because you think that things are this way right now, and they deserve to be talked about.

I respect the romantic comedy genre because it’s an invitation for the audience to come into a cinema and sit for two hours to simply think about love. Talking about love, then seeing beautiful people fall in love, is an incredible thing. But my favorite romantic comedies are those that seize this opportunity to talk about something that matters to the filmmakers who made them.

You even seem to say, in “Materialists,” that romantic comedies have given us false ideas about love.

Certainly! I find it funny that the love of your life happens to have the best job in the world while being played by one of the planet’s most beautiful stars…

Like Matthew McConaughey once did.

Exactly! And it’s really funny to see those things treated that way, while we think that part of what makes them so powerful, in reality, part of the reason we want to be with them is really related to everything else. And this also refers back, outside of cinema, to Jane Austen or Edith Wharton for example: of course, there are elements that concern the material side of life, the way we really must ensure our future, because that’s what these books talk about, social elevation.

But it’s also about aging. “What’s going to happen when we’re 60 and alone because we married poorly?” the characters must wonder (laughs) That’s a very important issue! When you read “Pride and Prejudice,” one of the greatest love stories of all time, we learn from the first page how much all the bachelors earn. And every page is so incredibly materialistic, but in a refreshing way, about what each costs and is worth, why some women have more value than others.

While all these corseted characters, the women, are really fighting for THE thing that is in my film, namely: “I’m not merchandise, I’m a person.” That’s literally what Liz Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice” wants! She says: “I’m not merchandise. I’m not just here to be sold. I’m a person.” That’s what she’s fighting for. The references are also there, in the sense that it has often been true that, for a long time, the only decision a woman could make about her destiny, for the rest of her life, was choosing which man to marry.

“There’s an endless commodification of who we are”

Today, in 2025, women have so many other incredible and wonderful options. You don’t have to get married, you can marry a woman, you can do what you want at a certain level. And you can earn more money than men. You can do so many incredible things thanks to the work of feminist ancestors, so it feels like it’s gotten a lot better, and that means a woman has more choices now. But on the other hand, there’s something that’s more difficult: in Jane Austen’s novels, the marriage market takes place in small towns, whereas today it takes place on Google.

It’s a global market that’s in your phone, where we’re all treated like merchandise and we treat each other like merchandise. There’s an endless commodification of who we are. In addition to topics that become a little more frightening over time: “You should go to the gym, you should invest in your body…” There’s a whole conversation about how to make yourself more valuable on this market of values on how to become better merchandise, which often leads to the question: “Why aren’t you getting Botox? Everyone’s investing in their face. Why aren’t you getting Botox?”

I think this is starting to become a situation where any commodification of human beings will lead to dehumanization, and that’s the most insidious thing about turning us into numbers: it will erase what makes us human beings, people. That’s already what Liz Bennet was saying, and it’s also what we need to keep saying because now, commodification is just faster and easier. It’s not that it didn’t exist before, no. It continues to exist in this way, but it’s just easier now because all you have to do is open Tinder. You no longer need to go to an event to compete with six other women: today you’re competing with the entire world on the marriage market.

You use the word “dehumanization,” and that joins what I like about the film: the way it refers to society in general when it talks about investing. The fact that we don’t want to be commodities, but not just in love, in our work or our daily lives too. Hence the title, “Materialists.”

(laughs) Yes, and that’s the little secret of the film actually. It presents itself as an invitation to spend time with beautiful people talking about beautiful things, but I have the impression that it then says: “Now that we’re all here, how about we talk for real?” There’s this idea of talking about what dating does and how it is, how we’re supposed to, using all these numbers, achieve this very ancient mystery and a thing impossible to control, while we’re regularly asked, as modern people, to control things. There’s such a desire to cling to it, and that’s why all these dating apps use algorithms, because their creators think they might solve the problem of love.

But we all know we can’t.

No, we can’t. It’s not possible. I wish it were so that all these invested resources wouldn’t be wasted, but I know the truth is that—and I think we all know starting with the French audience—there is absolutely no answer to it. Therefore, I think there are an infinity of possibilities, and that’s why it’s such a powerful subject for every story, and for cinema, because we think that this mystery will never be solved.

You talked about a film that invites “to spend time with beautiful people”: I imagine having stars in the cast was vital for the project, because you needed beautiful people and what their aura conveys for a film about appearances?

That’s an interesting idea. It happens that many actors and actresses are very beautiful: since we have to accept seeing them on a big screen, they need to be the most photogenic people on the planet. There’s nothing exceptional in that, they are just very beautiful. But, in the case of “Materialists,” it was mostly about what these three actors understood about the film. And who can better understand this idea of not being seen as merchandise but as a person than Captain America and the Mandalorian? Or Anastasia Steele from Fifty Shades of Grey.

Something makes my three performers truly understand what it’s like to be treated like merchandise. And that’s the case for most actors and public figures, even me. Everyone can feel treated like merchandise, especially when exposed. Even in your job, I’m sure you sometimes feel that sensation of being seen only as merchandise. Dakota, Chris, and Pedro understand this too and feel it deep in their souls.

Their response to the script and their desire to work on the film with me is linked to their own experience. To this way they are torn between their love for their work, their passion, and the investment they have made throughout their careers and the fact of sometimes not being treated as a person. I’ve always made sure that’s not the case with me, that they can play characters who are people.