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I’m so excited to talk to you because “Previous Life”, your debut featurewas my favorite movie 2023. So my first question is, was it that you learned from the experience that announced your approach to “materialists?”
Celine Song: Well, honestly how to make a movie. [laughs] I feel like I didn’t know how to make a movie “past life”, and I feel like “materialists”, I walked at least one movie. It’s so holistic. And of course, it gives me the opportunity to challenge myself more. Because I know more, so I feel like I finally asked more about myself and my team and my crew and actors, so I’m a little greedy.
So Dakota Johnson’s character Lucy is very boring in this movie, talking openly about things people think a lot, but not really verbal: money, class, position, such. So what did it feel like to write to a character who says things that the corresponding characters really don’t say out loud?
Well, I feel the relief I think everyone knows the audience when hearing, a quiet part said in a certain way, the way we talk about love and dating … Because the truth is that it is very close to the way we think with friends is behind the closed door. Maybe you won’t say it in public. Maybe you won’t say that on your dates, or the people you care about [what they think] about you. But the truth is that I think they are very open that someone is a really intimate friend when it comes to dating.
As a matchmaker, I was in a situation where I heard – because I worked as a competitor for six months – I actually ended up in a situation where people were very honest. So I heard really really stupid, real, boring. So I think this way that the way Lucy speaks is, for this amazing relief, when we know when we can say the part we all think of.
Did you find yourself looking at people differently when you left the match?
Oh, yes. I feel like I have learned so much about people in general and more than anything that all these feelings really come from. The word “valuable” movie has repetition. I think the world is so meant to turn us into commodities and objects – in this movie there is a character who says, “I’m not the goods, I’m a person.” And I think this way we often get some kind of goods, and we are asked to have goods for Instagram, the world, everything.
And then the thing is that after all this, I think we’ll come back and then you really have to ask the question, “Well, what all this dating, this game game play?” And it’s like “Well, everything is in the practice of love.” And it is: “How do we get through height, weight, wage debate and how do we get to a place where you fall in love with someone? How is it?” So I think I have learned so much about the isolation in the way we talk about the partner we want to get older with, and what it is like to get older with someone.
