FOR LOVE OR MONEY

Celine Song's Materialists interrogates the enduring role of wealth in courtship

- BY ELIANA DOCKTERMAN

A DECADE AGO, BEFORE CELINE SONG SCORED two Oscar nominations for her debut film, Past Lives, she was a struggling playwright searching for odd jobs to make ends meet. She didn’t have the latte-art skills to be a barista and couldn’t land a steady babysitting gig without prior experience. But with a tip from a friend already in the industry, she secured a role as a matchmaker in Manhattan.

A naive creature might assume Song’s meetings with clients seeking their soulmates involved conversations about hobbies, work-life balance, or procreation. In fact, the initial consultation was far more mathematical: they listed their requirements for height, income, age, and, yes, race. “All of the men would say ‘fit.’ What they meant was 20 BMI, just one level above underweight,” Song remembers. “The women wanted someone who was 6 ft. tall. My joke was, that person is going to be 5 ft. 7 by the time you're 90. And what is the goal of marriage if not to grow old together? All these numbers have nothing to do with that.”

Song lasted just six months on the job, but she knew as soon as she left that she would write about the experience. “I learned more about people in those six months than I did in any other part of my life,” she says. “I knew more than their therapists because they were willing to tell me their hearts’ desires in a way that was so frank and objective.”

Song’s sophomore writing and directorial effort for the big screen, Materialists (June 13), centers on cynical matchmaker Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson. She views her job as akin to that of a banker taking stock of her clients’ value on the dating market. The gap between what they say they want—a lifelong companion—and their shallow checklists plays as comic relief between scenes of Lucy’s own search for love. Fans of