‘You cannot game it’: Celine Song unpacks algorithm-era love with ‘The Materialists’

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This article was published 12/06/2025 (444 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Celine Song, some things in life can’t be strategized; they must play out on their own terms.

The Korean-Canadian filmmaker says “The Materialists,” the star-studded follow-up to her Oscar-nominated debut “Past Lives,” wasn’t the product of a calculated career move. She’d already begun writing it before her first film even hit theatres.

“I wish I could game it like, ‘Oh man, I made ‘Past Lives,’ what’s my next move?’” Song says on a virtual call from her New York home.

But the writer-director says the new A24 rom-com was born out of restless energy while waiting for “Past Lives” to premiere at Sundance in 2023.

“There was a funny six-month period where I was going a little bit crazy. I thought, ‘I actually need to use this time to do something productive with my life’ because I was just waiting for my movie to come out. So I wrote this thinking about the time that I was a matchmaker.”

In her early 20s, while trying to make it as a playwright in New York, Song worked at a matchmaking agency to pay the bills. What started as a side gig became an unexpected window into the spreadsheet logic of modern love.

“When you’re talking about dating and who you’re looking for as your partner, the list is about height, weight, income, job — all the things you can imagine that are in the specs,” says Song.

“And then you realize none of those things actually have anything to do with what it’s like to be in love. I wish it did so that you could game it like you game everything else, but the truth is you cannot game it. Love is just going to be something that happens to you. It’s as ancient and holy as it always has been.”

In “The Materialists,” out Friday, Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a matchmaker catering to wealthy New Yorkers with hyper-specific criteria. When she meets Pedro Pascal’s Harry, a rich, charming private equity manager, she sees a dream match — for someone else. But Harry sets his sights on Lucy, wining and dining her with extravagant ease. Things get complicated further when her ex, Chris Evans’ John, a struggling actor who still understands her deeply, reenters the picture.

Song says the film is partly a commentary on today’s swipe-driven approach to dating.

“It’s scary!” she exclaims about dating apps. “It’s getting more gamified by the day.”

Song sees herself as an old-school romantic. She explains “The Materialists” explores the tension between checkbox compatibility and that deeper, inexplicable feeling that says, “I think this is a person that I want to grow old with.”

“Love is the one great mystery of human life that we cannot solve, and we cannot turn it into an algorithm no matter how hard we try.”

Song was born in South Korea and moved to Markham, Ont., with her family when she was 12. She relocated to New York in 2011 to pursue an MFA in playwriting, and says she was struck by the city’s straight-shooting dating scene.

“The culture of New York City dating is just different than Canada’s. And I loved it. It is very blunt and it’s not very polite,” she says.

Turns out that no-filter attitude was right up her alley.

“I was not polite and it got me into a lot of trouble when I was in Canada,” she laughs, noting she had a propensity for swearing.

“Everybody was like, ‘You should watch your language.’”

In New York, she not only found the freedom to curse — she also found her husband, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, whom she met at 24. She recalls feeling like an outlier among her career-focused circle of friends in the city.

“I was the youngest person in my friend group to get married. And it was years before the second wedding. Most of my friends were having their first child approaching 40,” says Song, now 36.

“In New York, because of how hard it is to pay rent here, I think it is just not tenable to have a casual relationship with your work. It has to be that your work is your life.… Lucy is so obsessed with her work, too, which I think is relatable for so many working people.”

Beyond depicting a hustle-happy bachelorette in her mid-30s, Song says “The Materialists” reflects real life by placing financial considerations at the heart of modern dating. Lucy speaks directly about being money-conscious.

“I feel like so much media is so polite about money, so it was really important to me that in the movie we know what everybody makes, and what kind of place they own,” she says.

“Those numbers are there so that we can talk in the way that modern people actually talk.”

Still, despite the film’s title, Song views the materialistic approach to love as ultimately “flawed.”

“There’s no amount of money you can throw at it. It’s an impossible situation in a way. The only thing that works is the same thing that works in religion, which is it’s got to be a leap of faith,” she says.

“You have to jump every day. And it is just a completely beautiful and very brave thing that a person can do.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2025.