‘Modern Love’: 'Materialists' Director Celine Song Believes in Love at First Conversation

I'm Austin Mitchell, and for the past couple years, my colleague Azeen Goreshi and I have been reporting on the story of medical care for transgender kids. Where it came from, the lives it changed, how it became a protocol that spread around the world. and how the politics and a Supreme Court legal fight now threaten its existence. You can hear that story on The Protocol, a new six-part series from The New York Times. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.

This is Modern Love. Today, I'm talking to director and writer Celine Song. I gotta say, Celine can write a love story. I've watched her first movie, Past Lives, four different times, which means I cried watching Past Lives four different times. And I'm not alone in feeling so moved by it. Past Lives was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

It's a story about a woman named Nora, who is happily married when she reconnects with her childhood sweetheart, who she hasn't seen since she emigrated from Korea as a kid. And when he comes to visit her in New York, Nora finds herself torn. between her past, her present, and her future. Is he attractive? I think so. He's really masculine in this way that I think is so Korean. Are you attracted to him? I don't think so.

I don't know. I mean, I don't think so. Celine's writing just perfectly captures the everyday stuff of love. She brings you into these quiet, private moments you don't normally see. Now, Celine has a new movie out. It's called Materialists. It's the story of Lucy, who's a successful matchmaker, but can't seem to find a match for herself. Love is easy. Is it? I find it to be the most difficult thing in the world. That's because we can't help it. It just walks into our lives sometimes.

Are you kidding on me? Definitely not. Lucy is very good at her job. She reels in potential clients, interviews them about their dream matches, debriefs with them after dates. And as the title of the movie suggests, her clients are pretty obsessed with material concerns. Looks. Money. Status. Materialists takes us into this glitzy world of elite dating.

But at the same time, it's a movie about love, which means it's a movie about people fumbling and making mistakes, trying their best to find themselves and find their person. Today. Celine's song tells us about the joys and the challenges of exploring the mysteries of love in her writing. Plus, she reads a modern love essay about a relationship columnist who is utterly perplexed.

when it comes to finding her own partner. Turns out, the people who write the love stories are often just as confused as the rest of us. Stay with us. This is Somini Sengupta. I'm a reporter for The New York Times. I've covered nine conflicts, written about earthquakes, terror attacks, droughts, floods, many humanitarian crises. My job is to bear witness.

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And that impact is highly, highly unequal. My colleagues and I are doing our best to answer complicated questions like these, but we can't do that. without our subscribers. If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com slash subscribe and thank you.

Celine Song, welcome to Modern Love. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. We are so happy you are here. So in your new movie, Materialists, you made your main character, Lucy, who's played by Dakota Johnson. You made her... a matchmaker. And I've read that you were a matchmaker for a short period of time. Can you tell me about that?

I got a job as a matchmaker, mostly as just a day job, because I was a playwright in New York City. How old were you when you got the job? I was in my 20s, like mid-20s. And I did it for six months. What were you doing? Were you like... I set people up on dates. Like you were reading their profiles, kind of? Yeah, meeting them.

Meeting them. Very similar to what Lucy, the main character of your film, does. Meeting them and then setting them up. And then, you know, in the film, Lucy does this thing where she debriefs the dates with the people. Were you doing that as well? Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you have to.

It's like a luxury thing as I'm like, well, you get to instead of swiping on things on your own and doing feedback on your own, you get to have somebody. So that was, that's, of course, the idea. Were you good at it? I mean, I did it for so short of time. Honestly, can I tell you, it's like the part of the reason why I quit is because I wasn't writing. Because I was having too much fun.

you know you just confirmed was it because it was what was fun about it well what's fun about i mean it's fun for me specifically because i think that if you ask me like what my drug of choice is they'd be like people Right. That's my favorite drug. I completely agree with you. And it was like an amazing way to know about a stranger and what their hearts.

desire is right but i think i learned more about people in those six months than i think i didn't any other part of my life what did you learn well i think exactly what you will see in my movie which is that The language that we have for talking about our partner for life does not align.

with what it is actually like to fall in love, right? You know, my friends or whoever, they'll hear that I worked as a matchmaker for six months and they'll be like, you have to send me something, right? You have to help me. I know, I'm trying to ask you that for myself, Celine. It's kind of like, I need help with love, I need help with love. And I have to sit there and I think that they're often trying to ask me about the fundamental mystery of...

Why am I single when these other people aren't? Or like, am I lovable? Is love possible? Is love worth it? And the thing is, I never have a good answer to that. Right. And I think I don't have a good answer to that because love is a mystery that is ancient. I want to talk. more about your movie materialists and specifically Lucy the main character she's a matchmaker as we've talked about she's very good at her job but the thing she's not so good at is

her own love life. She can't seem to find the right match for herself. And I want to know, like, why do you think she has this kind of blind spot when it comes to love in her own life? Well, I think that dating is different than love. So in that way, it's like, well, can Lucy more than other people assess the person and assess that person's value in the marketplace of dating? Absolutely. Is that considered knowing love? No.

And the truth about Lucy is in the film, she is asked, it's like, you must know a lot about love by Pedro Pascal's character, Harry. He goes, you must know a lot about love. And Lucy goes, no, I know about dating. Right. And of course, Harry goes, you know, what's the difference? Yeah. And Lucy's answer is, well, dating is very difficult and love is easy.

which I think is the theme of the whole film. To me, it's like, well, love is very easy, and that's the hardest thing about it. Tell me what you mean by that. Love is very easy, and that's the hardest thing about it. Tell me what you mean by that. Well, love, when you are in it... It's something you can't help and you can't control. And it's just something that happens. So in that way, it's so easy, but that's what's so difficult about it.

As in, you don't have control. And of course, in modern world, all we want to do is control.

Go to the gym, Botox, right? Everything is there so that it can increase your value in the stock market of dating, right? That's really what the movie's about. All these people trying to increase their... value in the dating market yeah and all of those i wish that all of those efforts actually resulted in love but i know the truth and i think that we all ultimately know the truth which is that none of that it has anything to do with whether you're going to fall in love

You may be in front of somebody who is perfect for you in every way and feel nothing. And you might be in front of somebody who is imperfect in every way and you just feel everything. I always say, it's like, well, fine if you want a guy who's six feet tall, but hopefully you're with that person when they're 90. And when you're 90... That person is 5'4". Because we all shrink. We do. That's true. We all shrink. It's very true.

Yeah. And then like, what if you're the person you're in love with, oh, wants to change jobs and they no longer, you make the salary. Do you still no longer love them? Yeah. It's irrelevant. you still have to look at that wrinkled face of that person when you're 90 and still like them. All right. You still have to look at them and say, like, look at that cute doofus. You know, that's what you have to feel. You have to be like, oh, you're so cute. Or like, oh, my God, I love you. You know.

You know, we're talking about the main character of materialist Lucy, and I mentioned that she's good at finding love for other people, but love for her. is this giant mystery. And that kind of juxtaposition really reminds me of the experience of the author of the essay you're going to read. Can you tell me a little bit why you were drawn to this essay in particular?

Well, I think precisely for this reason, which is that the thing that everybody thinks that they're an expert in is the thing that completely baffles them. What a beautiful contradiction. Wait, can I just ask you, as someone who writes about love, do you feel like you're that? Do you feel like people think you're an expert at love and they don't? I think without question. I feel that way too. Yeah, right? But I think it's like not knowing.

learning that you don't know. And I think this is what this essay is. It's like, I think that there is such wisdom in that. To me, the reason why I'm drawn to love stories, the reason I'm drawn to love as a mystery, is because it's one place where I feel like... I'm reading everything, looking at everything, I'm thinking about it a lot, but I feel so, what is it? I feel like an idiot when it comes to this one very powerful ancient mystery, which is the mystery of love.

It's clear that you've wondered so much. about love and will continue to wonder and that wonder is manifesting in in your work of course i mean it's always it's like an endlessly fascinating thing because again it's the one thing that makes me feel like a fool i mean like director i have answers all day like every day like they ask me

a million questions and I have answers to all of them. They're like this shade of pink or this shade of pink. And I'm like this shade of pink. I know for sure. Right. I have answers like I'm a boss. So it's amazing that there is this one thing. that forces me to completely surrender. What a beautiful thing that I just feel like, oh, thank God. Thank God there is something that makes me completely have to let go. Love is surrender.

right? You're surrendering. And I think that's really hard to accept, especially in a world where we're obsessed with winning. So in that way, I'm like, well, with Louise and my character Lucy, they both have to surrender. They both have to surrender. That's the only way. That's the only way that it is possible. When we come back, Celine Song reads the essay, My View from the Margins, by Louise Rafkin. Stay with us.

Celine, I cannot wait to hear you read this essay whenever you're ready. My View from the Margins by Louise Rafkin The house was an enormous tutor in a neighborhood I hardly ever visit, the rich, hilly part of San Francisco with vistas to the bay. I parked. grabbed my notebook, and started up the drive. Above me, visible through the large window of the lighted kitchen, was a couple I had come to interview, the doctor and his wife.

I watched her spread peanut butter on bread, which the man folded into plastic bags, the intimacy between them palpable even from a distance. A somewhat painful feeling arose in my throat. What was it that I had just seen? How would I write about it? And what had just happened to me? My breath was shallow. I waited, inhaled deeply.

felt my ribs expand and the lump in my throat melt, and then I knocked. Next, as I have done now for two years, I stepped inside the home of complete strangers and asked them, My job is to interview couples for our city newspaper. When an editor called to see if I was interested in writing a weekly article, I was taken aback. I had been angling for a column for more than a decade, but when we met face to face, and she said the word, relationships, I was flummoxed.

How couples meet, unusual courtship stories, she elaborated. Love stories. It was a sweetheart of a job. Make my own schedule, talk to interesting people. Enjoy prime placement in the paper and make good money. Great, I barked, a little too loudly. I'm not a romance kind of girl, I admitted. But... I'm fascinated by how other people fall in love, I quickly added. What I didn't say was that I was also jaded about love, having just split from the most recent of a string of...

not quite right girlfriends, the number of which, as I approached middle age, had reached into the double digits. I had dated this last not right person for more than a year. On paper, we looked great together, with similar passions and compatible quirkiness. Yet I had known from the beginning that something was missing. We had sparks, but no fireworks. a small flame that remained small despite my most ardent fanning. Occasionally she would sleep with someone else, though it hardly bothered me.

That other person, it seemed to me, was no more her final destination than I was. Until, that is, she migrated permanently into that other person's bed. So there I was, bruised of heart and single yet again, facing a challenge. An editor with an evangelical enthusiasm for a project, and me. A perennially single and somewhat cynical relationship flunky with a lust for newsprint column inches. It sounds great, I ventured. I catapulted into my work.

It's what people do to distract themselves from a breakup. And there was that scary voice in my head that kept whispering, you're 50, you're single. Good luck with that. In the two years since, I've interviewed more than 200 people about how they met, married or merged, and time and again I've asked my incredulous questions. One man married a woman from the Mauritius Islands that he met through a French pen pal organization.

You flew to Africa to meet someone after exchanging two postcards? I asked. Not only that, but he proposed in less than a week. They've been married for 10 years. An Italian-American guy paid the bridge toll for a cute girl in the car behind him. She married him. A couple met in a head-on collision. Neither was badly hurt.

another in a relocation camp for survivors after World War II. Two lesbians met as nine-year-olds in a Christian cult from which they escaped together after high school graduation, now in their 40s. they're still together, amused by and grateful for the rare circumstance of never having experienced a broken heart. A world map hangs in my office, poked with colorful pins marking the countries of origin of my subjects. Yet, what's most foreign to me about them is not their culture or ethnicity.

It's their certainty about something as inexplicable as love. How did you know, I asked the woman, who had met her future husband on a plane, and swear she knew they would marry from the moment she squeezed into that middle seat. I felt it, she repeated to my persistent inquiries. Felt what? I have wondered more times than I care to recall. Inevitably, they turned the tables and asked me about my own relationship status.

Sometimes I skirt the question, but occasionally I give it a shot. How did you meet your husband? This came at me a few weeks ago from a Burmese political activist who met his wife in a Thai refugee camp. I didn't bother to correct his gender presumption. I haven't yet, I stammered. Their faces fell. How sad for you, this work, the woman said. As I was leaving, she tucked a small statuette into my purse. For good luck, she told me. At times, I feel like an anthropologist on Mars.

So many of the people I interview have gut feelings and are hit with lightning bolts and simply know. But no matter how many times I hear these stories, and I hear them every week, I have yet to understand. I've known things before, sure. The one time I really felt that magnetic feeling was with the charismatic blonde Italian. Sure, the initial attraction was intense, ignited by a glance across the grocery store.

But the flip side was like turning magnets' backsides to each other. The repulsion, fights and jealousy and drama was just as powerful. I can always turn to my rationalizations. My parents didn't give me a great model for partnership, and maybe I'm missing the gene for long-term love. But at this age, really? That excuse seems both boring and tragic.

My shrink says I need to stop asking questions, buckle down and learn to love. Quit searching for the easy, mind-blowing, true love story, he says. It's an illusion. It's my job, I tell him. half smirking as if I'm in on the joke. But then I go out and hear another of these stories and I wonder. Sometimes I think it's just a linguistic challenge.

Love is a noun, something precious that you find or that finds you. Like in many of the stories that end up beneath my byline. We treat each other like we're each other's mother, said a Tibetan woman of her husband. Because in another life, we might have been. Her marriage to an American Buddhist began as a way to immigrate, and then they started to have feelings for each other. Our hearts knew before our brains, she told me.

I wrote it down and read it over several times before deciding to make that the final line of their story. It will guarantee moist eyes, at least from some readers. But these love-as-verb stories are not as flashy or Hollywood-esque as the ones in which love falls from the sky. It must be torture, a woman told me the other week. To be single and meet all of us lovebirds?

She had hooked up after 40 years with her high school nemesis. They had randomly crossed paths without the help of the internet, 3,000 miles from where they had grown up. Curled on her couch, she cooed into the shoulder of her new true love. I drive off from apartments, homes, trailers, and I'm writing the column already. But I'm also thinking, will anything like that ever happen to me? How happy are they, really?

I put the key into the ignition and wonder if, on the way home, someone will cross in front of my car and our eyes will meet and we will just know. In the years I've had this job, I've gone from dating, to seeing someone, to seeing no one, to dating again. Yet I continue to ask, notebook in hand, how do people know with such certainty that their person is the one?

Or do they not know and just decide? I'm paid to wonder about these things. But even if I weren't, I'd still be looking through that window questioning what was passing between that doctor and his wife. An outsider, always peering in, ever curious. Which, it turns out, is what makes me perfect for this job. Because after all my years in relationships...

in the years of writing my column, the commonness of being fully coupled, that level of intimacy, is still as mysterious to me as the boundary of our universe. I can't see it, but... I know it must be out there somewhere.

what's coming up yeah it's a great it's a beautiful what's coming up for you having just having just read it well i just feel like it's just such a such a beautiful piece because it's like it is i feel like it contains everything about what troubles all of us Because the thing is, once we're in love, I feel like once I was in love, I think that suddenly it feels like you have answers to everything.

Right? You're like, oh, it was so easy. It was so simple. It all happened. You forget everything that got you there. Oh, yeah. If the author of this essay... Louise Rafkin, were to interview you. Tell me how you would tell her about your experience of falling in love. I think that experience really taught me that there's no such thing as love at first sight, but there is something as love at first conversation.

Tell me. I really believe that. Tell me the story. That's really what it was. So I met my husband at the Ed Ralevy Foundation's residency. And when I first saw him... How old were you? I was 24. I was 22. And I was there. And I think that I was there to like write the next great American play. Yeah. You know, and so was he. Right. So we're both there and we're kind of like, we're going to write a great American.

play i think that he showed up later than everybody else and then uh something that i know is true is that like i thought like oh he looks so like young and You're 24 years old looking at a 22-year-old and you're like, it's just a baby. And then I think that are we...

We're talking. Hold up. Did you think he was cute or you just didn't even register? You just thought he was young? Well, I just thought I was like, I don't know. I think at that time that I was really thinking about guys who are younger. Right. And then anyway, so I met him and then I think that we sat down and I think we're talking and I think they're like, should we read each other's plays? So I gave him my very first play and he gave me his very first play.

And we sat at this barn in Montauk where we just read it. And I think we finished at a similar time. Like side by side just in this barn? Yeah, like across from each other. And then we like looked up. And then we like looked at each other and we thought like, oh, is it just feeling of competition? Is that what it is? And then we were talking and we're like, oh, I think that we're falling in love.

It was so clear that we were either going to be like nemesis or get married. Like it was very clear. Why? Why was it clear? I'm going to push you there. I think that it's because of what we experience in each other's place. without us having ever met. Because part of what's amazing about a piece of writing is that you get to know the author in this very specific, intimate way. Just like how I feel like I've never met Louise Rafkin, but now that I read this, I feel like I know her.

In a way that I hope that when you watch materialists or when you watch past lives, you also feel like you know me in some way. The author of this Modern Love essay, Louise, just kind of keeps pressing her couples like, but how did you know? Did you really know? What do you mean? Like, maybe can you share a moment where you felt. Where you felt.

You're self-weaver in that knowledge. Well... Hmm. Was there ever a moment of doubt, basically, is what I'm asking. Moment of doubt? It's... that's so interesting because i feel like it's like um the beautiful thing about uh doubting Is this the right person? Is the way that that person is going to always prove that they are, right? Because what an amazing romantic thing. So, of course, in the beginning, you don't know.

each other that well. So it's fully possible for you to be like, well, I don't know. I don't know. Like, is that, is this the thing? Is this the thing? And you're always sussing it out. And then, of course, the answer comes and it's like, yeah, no, it's the right person. So doubt is there just so that the faith can be affirmed. The author of this essay...

wonders a lot about the nature of love, even linguistically. She's like, is love a noun, something you find, right? Like a thing. Or is love a verb, something you do? Where do you fall on that? It's definitely verb. Yeah, it's not a noun. I like how you just have, it's a verb, okay. It's a verb. I wish it was a noun, because then we can, then all this language around acquisition, get a boyfriend, right? Like, the language around that would make sense.

But unfortunately, it's a verb and it's a much harder thing, right? It's like an everyday practice. You have to go and do it every day, right? But then I think what's amazing when you're in love is that you get to be like, oh, how lucky that I do it every day. how lucky i get to do it every day what is and it can be small what is the last what is something specific a specific love as verb moment can you point to like a moment of

Love being around. It really happened today. My thing is, like, I left my AirPods in my apartment. And it came down. I know, so annoying. And then I came down to the elevator. My husband and I were going somewhere. And I was like, I forgot my AirPods. We have to go back. And he said, I'll go up. Well, there you go. Am I going to cry because of Arupon? But like, I'm like, well, yeah, no, I'll go up. He's like, you know.

He just ran up for the AirPods because why? Because he knew that I was annoyed about having to do it. And he said, I would rather do it than to annoy you even a little bit. you know did you feel loved did you yeah that's the thing right it's like i wish that it was more like um

I always feel this and I feel this. I felt this in when I was making past lives too. I'm like the one of the most romantic conversations is happening in the tiny bedroom in his village. I was just going to say this moment of the AirPods, it feels so real and it really feels kind of opposite of the love.

we traditionally see in the movies. This is a small, everyday moment. I'll run up, no worries, you know. Yeah, and I think it's like so much of what romance is is being sold, right, to us as like... rent out a whole restaurant because we watch like so much right there is like every dating show they're like

four string quartet right it's like that's kind of a thing and it's like of course like all the places that in my movie materialist harry takes her to pedro pascal's character he just takes her to these amazing beautiful places Of course, I love, I love going to nice restaurants. I love it. But my thing is, it's like, well, it's, if you're sitting across from somebody who wouldn't grab the AirPods for you, right? Then actually that restaurant is just a, just a restaurant.

I have kind of a fun thing to share with you. This essay was written in 2009. So I reached out to the author, Louise Rafkin, for an update, and she has a great one. She said... Since writing my essay, I have been in a 13-year relationship. I know! We met on a blind date in 2012, set up by friends. We'd actually met 20 years before in a martial arts class, and there is a picture of us in the same class. But I didn't remember meeting her, but she remembered me.

We went on three dates, and I tried to break up with her, and she says she didn't know we were together. Love it. Love this guarded queen. Literally. Guarded queen. We don't live together, which people find interesting and also say is a good idea. She says, I still find love mysterious, but I have been surprised by how much I have grown and learned from being in this relationship. We have a good therapist. Smiley face. I love this update.

I know. Doesn't it feel like a rom-com ending? Oh, it's a perfect rom-com ending. Celine Song, thank you so much for this conversation. It was so fun. The Modern Love team is Amy Pearl, Christina Josa, Davis Land, Emily Lang, Jen Poyant, Lynn Levy, Reva Goldberg, and Sarah Curtis. This episode was produced by Amy Pearl.

It was edited by Davis Land and Lynn Levy. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Dan Powell, Diane Wong, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, and Roman Nemistow. Our video team is Brooke Minters, Felice Leone, Michael Cordero, Sawyer Roquet, and Sophie Erickson. This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez with studio support from Maddie Macielo and Nick Pittman.

The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we have the instructions in our show notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.