With 'Materialists,' Celine Song explores love in the cruel era of dating

LeMonde

3 days ago

Love can sometimes feel like an impossible quest. We wait for that unmistakable connection with another person, a chemistry of minds and bodies, and hope they check off a list of more or less fanciful criteria, from certain physical traits to "do they watch films in the original language?" This tension between romance and practicality sits at the very core of Materialists, Celine Song's second feature film. It's inspired by her own experience as a matchmaker, a profession she practiced for six months in New York some years ago.
The director of the acclaimed Past Lives (2023) brings the romantic comedy into the realm of modern dating, a universe much maligned and rarely explored given its outsized role in contemporary life. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker, spending her days catering to clients desperate to find the right person. Age, height, weight, income: The criteria pile up as quantifiable data, making Lucy compare her job to that of an insurance worker. Yet in her own life, she is single, waiting to find a man to marry and preferably one who is very wealthy.