The director of materialists Celine Song reveals the surprising genre that influenced the film [Exclusive Interview]

I am so delighted to talk to you because “Past Lives”, your first feature, was my favorite film of 2023. So, my first question is: was there something that you learned from this experience that informed your approach to “materialists?”

Céline Song: Well, honestly, how to make a film. [laughs] I feel like I don’t know how to make a film making “past lives”, and I feel like “materialists”, I entered at least after making a film. It’s so holistic. And what of course is doing is that it allows me to challenge me more. Because I know more, so I feel like I end up asking more about me and my team and my crew and my actors too, so I become a little greedy.

So the character of Dakota Johnson, Lucy, is very frank in this film, openly speaking of things that people think a lot, but do not really verbalize: money, class, status, things like that. So, what did it do for a character who says things that similar characters might not really say out loud?

Well, I feel like the relief that I think that everyone feels in the public when he hears the thing, the calm part said aloud in some ways, on the way we really talk about love and meetings … because the truth is that it is very close to the way I think we are talking about our friends behind closed doors. Maybe you wouldn’t say that in public. Maybe you wouldn’t say that to your appointment, necessarily, or people you care [what they think] about you. But the truth is that they will be very open on this subject, I think, with someone who is a really intimate friend when it comes to going out together.

As a switchboard, I was in a position in which I heard – because I worked as a contribution for six months – I found myself in a situation where people were very honest. So I actually really heard nitty-Gritty, Real, Blunt. So I think that in this way, this is what really informed the way Lucy speaks, because of this surprising relief that we feel when we can say the part we all think.

Did you find yourself looking at people differently after leaving this twinning work?

Oh yes. I feel like I have learned a lot about people in general, and more than anything, where all these feelings come from. There is a rehearsal in the film of the word “precious”. I think that because of how the world is so determined to transform us into raw materials and objects – there is a character in this film which says: “I am not goods, I am a person.” And I think that in this way, we are so often transformed into goods of a certain kind, and we are asked to be goods for Instagram, for the world, everything.

And then the thing is, after all this, I think we come back and then you really have to ask the question: “Well, what was all these meetings, this value game, for?” And it’s like: “Well, everything is looking for love.” And this is a question of: “How are we going to go through the size, the weight, the wage conversation, and how are we going to happen where you fall in love with someone? How will it happen?” So I think that I learned so much about this disparity between the way we talk about the partner with which we want to age and what it is really to age with someone.