REVIEW: 'Materialists' is a faux, wistful rom-com at best
Warning: This review contains some spoilers.
Celine Song cannot handle a proper romantic comedy. From the get-go, Materialists, her sophomore feature, is billed as "a sparkling romantic comedy" that at the same time fosters "long, thoughtful conversations on the very nature of why love and relationships matter so much." Such promise is reflected in the movie poster, the list of cinematic references that A24 intentionally leaked online, the studio’s clever, genre-fueled marketing, and the entire press tour that is bent on conditioning the audience over the solid chemistry of its incredibly good-looking stars. Save for the actual film proper.
The story finds Manhattan matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson) split between two heartthrobs she runs into at the wedding of one of her clients. First is Harry (Pedro Pascal), the groom’s brother, who, in elite matchmaking parlance, is a “unicorn,” which is code for a bachelor who’s rich, gorgeous, educated, well-dressed, and, most crucially, tall. “A 10 out of 10 in every category,” as Lucy neatly puts it. Then there is John (Chris Evans), Lucy’s ex-boyfriend, a broke and failing actor who’s part of the waitstaff at the wedding. On the one hand, Lucy ended her relationship with John over money, though she says she doesn’t fault him for being broke. On the other hand, she refuses Harry’s dating offer, at least initially, as she reckons that he’s economically out of her league.
Song gamifies this thinly orchestrated love triangle just as her heroine treats romantic union as nothing but a form of transaction neatly reduced to a set of boxes that need ticking. For Lucy, the dating world is a marketplace, where self-worth is most likely the least desirable, and sellable, asset. Just state your offer, and the rest is mathematics. But what happens if Lucy isn’t the one running the negotiation, Song seems to ask. Well, not much. We might as well invest our energy elsewhere.
Materialists appropriates the rom-com genre’s lexicon: visuals that are bright and enticing, the presence of a girl boss, a meet-cute, a love triangle, a moment of cathartic realization, and a happy ending. But what inevitably bubbles to the surface is Song’s arthouse impulse. There is no grand gesture for every gesture is slow and small.
Every conversation devolves into a wistful, poetic feeling. The camera insists on every tentative gaze, every heavy pause. It must always linger in the quietude of a given moment.
This dramaturgical method, of course, recalls the filmmaker’s feature debut, Past Lives, another New York movie propelled by another love triangle. Part of the hype of the first film is the mysterious allure of Song’s private life and relationship with Justin Kuritzkes, screenwriter of sports threesome drama Challengers, and how it informs the narrative’s emotional throughline.
Here, Song’s enigma is that she cannot write good dialogue. “Can we talk about something else?” Lucy tells John when their conversation at a bar, where they head along with Harry after watching the actor’s new play, swiftly lapses into settling down and how Harry is an ideal candidate. You can bet that almost every conversation in the film shifts between money, work, and the idea of a perfect match to service Song’s grand philosophical proposition: Romance is a business deal since time immemorial. Something fated, like in-yeon.
The director instantly makes this pitch in the lineless prologue depicting two troglodytes entering a romantic union after a barter. He gives her tillage tools and a bouquet of flowers. She offers him food. It’s only practical to fall in love. And of course, it is shot so tenderly. The film goes on to repeat this totalizing view like a recycled joke generating fewer and fewer laughs. Like, yeah, whatever, we get it. Can we actually talk about something else?
Following the logic of late capitalism, Song writes her characters exactly like cogs in a machine—perfunctory and defined only by their economic standings. To desire is to labor, she argues readily. Johnson has the most screentime, but it’s hard to find much profundity in her character’s life. If anything, Lucy lives a vacuous one. She has no friends. She distances herself from the slightest gesture of real connection. Every person she meets is a potential client. It’s not that she has no idea what she really wants, it’s more to do with Song’s compulsion to confine Lucy’s personhood to her work as a matchmaker. Any possibility outside of it is painfully unexamined.
Johnson expertly inhabits the absurd psychology of Lucy. Her performance thrives on “aura farming,” as though she’s hyper-aware that she’s playing a character equally silly and insane. God forbid a woman enjoys a good time. But Song’s script betrays the bleakness and magnetic faux self-assurance Johnson extends to her portrayal to entertain a hackneyed fantasy about modern desire.
As for the two prince charmings, well, it is what it is. Every detail we learn about Harry is tangential: He’s a fine man, he works in “private equity,” he owns an expensive Tribeca penthouse, he undergoes a “game-changing” leg surgery to add six more inches to his height. That’s about it, really. Pascal in the press tour is far more charming and funny than the Pascal we witness onscreen. Meanwhile, John is Song’s hollow notion of a better choice. He has a face you’d love to examine closely, he’s chronically poor (if that isn’t obvious), and he’s still living with his roommates (nothing wrong with that). It’s partly refreshing to see Evans assume this kind of role again, though he doesn’t have much to work with. Whereas Harry is a masochist, John is casually a misogynist. Song tries to convince us that they are polar opposites, but in actuality they are not. If anything, they’re indistinguishable from each other, save for who has money and who has none. Their arcs follow a template, which is to play foil to Lucy. They are ideas left unformed.
I bemoan Materialists for being unfunny. The humor is few and far between. At this point, calling it an “anti-romcom,” a “deconstruction,” or a “satire” is just being too generous. I refuse the urge to be snarky, but Song is pushing it. What she has here is broad commentary pleading for more specific talking points. Instead she pines for tangents. She has a thing for pathos more than insight. Nothing is sexy about that. She loves shock for the sake of it, so she makes room for a subplot involving sexual assault. I suppose being unreadable is her primary draw.
Materialists is soaked in pragmatism. It’s so invested in showing us the bleakness of modern desire as warped by the capitalist structure. But in the end, Song pulls the brakes and tries to sell this phony fantasy of love being enough to outweigh the very politics of romance it critiques. Out of nowhere, Song is trying to win us over with her sweeping sentimentality. Lucy leaves Harry, and chooses John, despite her internalized resentment of him. Song suggests that Lucy and John know better now, even as we’re barely given access to their past dynamic as a couple, save for a single flashback. But alas, Song’s cinematic vision must insist on being bittersweet. No matter what happens, Lucy has to end up with either of these men.
The final shot mirrors the prologue: John proposes to Lucy at a picturesque park, with a ring made out of a flower petal. “How would you like to make a very bad financial decision?” John asks. Lucy accepts the offer. No math required. The romantic music swells. Love is inexplicable, love endures—propaganda I’m clearly not falling for.
Materialists hits local theaters on Aug. 6. Watch the official trailer below.