Celine Song is just two films into her career, but she’s already established herself as a storyteller who infuses the tumult of modern love with ancient wisdom, and a kind of transcendence that breathes poetry into a disenchanted world.
In Song’s first film, 2023’s Past Lives, this transcendence took the form of “in-yun”: the Buddhist idea of providence gradually bringing soulmates together through ongoing reincarnations. The film follows Nora, a Korean immigrant married to an American, as she reunites with a childhood love from her home country and reflects on the “past life” she left behind. Those expecting a runaway romance or classic love triangle may be disappointed. Rather than hinging on whether Nora will leave her husband, the film sits with reality as it is, with Nora grieving the life she might have lived with another person in Korea while accepting that maybe there are greater forces weaving people together and apart. I wrote at the time that Past Lives felt like a spiritual response to the wave of multiverse movies dominating screens. While many of those stories celebrated the liberation of infinite life paths, Past Lives recognized such unbounded “what-ifs” as paralyzing.
Song’s sophomore feature, Materialists, exists in conversation with Past Lives. Not only are both films set in a lush and vividly photographed New York City, but both wrestle with the flood of choices the modern world offers — especially in love — and how our selection of partners might shape our conceived identity. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a professional matchmaker for wealthy clients seeking romantic partners perfectly tailored for them. In a sense, the dating scene of New York in this film becomes its own multiverse. Every client Lucy takes on expects her to reach into the metropolitan ether and conjure up a soul mate who meets their precise specifications — age, height, salary, political views — all carefully calculated. For Lucy, it’s simple math, like closing a sale.
READ: ‘Past Lives’ Places Love at the Crossroads of Fate and Free Will
Where Past Lives grounded its romance in ancient “in-yun,” Materialists opens by planting itself in different soil: with a naturalistic prelude following a prehistoric man as he gathers a bouquet of flowers in a field and returns home to offer them to a woman at the edge of a cave. As the two exchange gentle gazes, he fashions a ring from a blossom and places it on her finger — a gift. The woman smiles, cherishing it. It’s an image that clearly evokes a kind of demythologized Adam and Eve, imagining what the earliest picture of marriage might have looked like, minus the overtly religious subtext. A hard cut from this prehistoric prologue to the bustling city of New York places the rest of the film within a historical conversation: How have relationships changed since our earliest days? How have they stayed the same? To what extent is marriage a business deal — and is there anything cosmic beyond that reality? Elsewhere in the film, talk of “dowry” and “propositions” feels almost like modern translation of the often-financial nature of the courtship in Pride and Prejudice, and even Lucy’s job as a luxury matchmaker exists as a modern echo of an ancient role (à la Fiddler on the Roof).
Where ‘Past Lives’ grounded its romance in ancient “in-yun,” ‘Materialists’ opens by planting itself in different soil: with a naturalistic prelude following a prehistoric man as he gathers a bouquet of flowers in a field.
Throughout Materialists, almost all of the characters speak about relationships in highly transactional terms. Lucy likes her wealthy suitor Harry (Pedro Pascal) because he makes her feel “valuable,” and Harry refers to Lucy’s “intangible assets.” In Harry’s words, Lucy is “someone who understands the game,” calling her a “luxury good.” Some characters admit to undergoing surgical modifications — like becoming six inches taller — to be more “competitive” in the “marketplace.”
These discussions may sound crassly commercial, but Song doesn't dismiss them entirely, because she lives in reality. Throughout history, marriage has long included economic dimensions. And although the relative self-sufficiency of individuals in the modern world has reduced the need for it as a purely practical or financial arrangement, the courtship process has nevertheless retained (and maybe even increased) its commodified nature in a multiverse of online partner shopping. Some attributes can increase the chances of finding a desirable partner, and economics are real. But when these are the only frameworks considered, they reduce cosmic forces — maybe even “in-yun” — to a “materialist” plane. Later in the film, one character accuses Lucy of treating her matchmaking clients like “merchandise,” leaving her uncertain about the impact of her work. When Harry asks her, “Isn’t marriage a business deal?” Lucy answers, “Yes, but love has to be on the table.” The institution of marriage throughout history is one thing. But love, the film ultimately suggests, is more than mutual profit; like the man and woman in the prologue, it must involve some form of gentle giving.
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This is where Chris Evans’ John shines. John loves Lucy, not out of a desperate impulse to contort himself to fit her “type,” but because of who she is and what they can be together. He does not have wealth, but like the widow’s meager offering in the temple (Mark 12:41-44), he willingly gives everything he has. For John, love is not a transaction — it is a gift given and received.
In The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, writer Lewis Hyde discusses this concept of transactional and gift-based relationships — not just in romance, but in all community life. The problem with transaction, Hyde argues, is that it is anathema to long-term relationships. Whether in a shopping mall or a marriage, when a transaction is completed and both parties have been satisfied, the relationship has no reason to continue. And when prospective partners are treated as commodities to prevent the other from dying alone, the commitment is on shaky ground.
But gifts are different. Where the debt in a transaction can be paid and the relationship promptly concluded, a gift can only be received with continued relationship, paid not in “math” but in an ongoing dance of gratitude and giving in return. This gratitude, when directed rightly, may not even be owed to the person themselves but to a higher power who gifted them into your life.
This is where Materialists speaks backward to Past Lives. If we believe that “every good and perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17), we may be freed from the existential worry of choosing the perfect life path or partner and become more capable of receiving what we’ve been given as it comes. Love, by way of Materialists, is giving yourself — giving everything you have, however meager — as a gift to another person, not because you believe you will always meet each other’s needs, but because you desire to offer what you can.
It’s just as the Japanese Breakfast song that plays over the credits playfully intones: “My baby, he don't have nothing to give / But he gives it to me”
Georgia Gray Coley is a documentary filmmaker and culture writer living in Nashville. She writes about the intersection of trans experience and theology at her Substack, Georgia In Her Mind.
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