"Keeping things vague would be cowardly for a movie called 'Materialists,'" says the writer-director, who also discusses how her film's stars, Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, relate to its themes.

This is the brief and unexpected opening of Celine Song’s Materialists, a prologue that announces a certain loftiness in the film’s premise. Or in spite of it, as a sudden cut flings us into the classic opener of many a millennial rom-com: the cosmopolitan heroine at her vanity,