Review: Materialists

Director:  Celine Song

Stars:  Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal

It’s bad form to critique a movie for not being what you wanted it to be, but the advertising campaign for Celine Song’s sophomore film has been too misleading not to address. Those delightful trailers dared to promise us a fully-fledged return to the rom-com of old, shorn of the kind of novelties that adorn the precious scraps tossed straight to streamers these days. This looked for all the world like a loving throwback to a kind of moviegoing experience that was often undervalued, if not treated with outright scorn. And, with the director of indie darling Past Lives at the helm, the suggestion also that this one would really land.

Materialists is not that movie. For one, it really isn’t funny, and for another it isn’t trying to be. It isn’t even romantic half of the time (though Song knows how to write a zinger when she needs one). More often than not, Materialists is a dejected, weary and wounded drama. Jaded, cynical and disenfranchised, with an off-putting judgmental streak exemplified in its off-putting central character; professional matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson).

We’re in affluent New York, obviously. To begin with Lucy seems like a potential reimagining of Jane Austen’s Emma, seemingly disinterested in romantic love but with a sparky talent for creating couples. We meet her in the throes of celebrating the 9th wedding that has resulted from her efforts, and it is in this capacity that she meets ‘unicorn’ Harry (Pedro Pascal) – a mega-rich bachelor whom she tries to snap up as a potential client, only to discover his sights are set on her. Wouldn’t you know it, there’s a complication in the mix; Lucy’s ex John (Chris Evans) is catering the event in between acting gigs, and their reunion rekindles mixed emotions from their dating years.

It’s a pretty solid set-up for a romcom, but Song’s interests lie elsewhere, taking this vehicle and it’s sensibilities and stripping away all of the cosy fluff. She interrogates the genre to see how it’ll stand up to real world threats like shallow prejudices, economic disparities and even sexual assault. Materialists also takes to task the modern dating scene, presenting a tick-box industry of high expectations among a picky and dissatisfied populous of entitled narcissists. It’s an unflattering portrait to say the least. 

If the romcom stripped of laughs and tossed back to reality is something of a cold shower, Song continues to show confidence behind the camera. On a technical level, Materialists counters its frequent philosophical ugliness with handsome photography, deft camera moves and the kind of high-end production design one might expect from this setting and milieu. It hits a lot of platonic ideals. But these surface pleasures create further mixed messages about what we’re to receive via Johnson’s flawed protagonist.

I get it, it’s called Materialists, but Lucy platforms a particularly craven set of normalised values; a world in which a man’s height and income are immovable yardsticks, where a woman’s age is a mark against her the higher it gets; where the races are tiered. For Lucy love is a numbers game. She’s distilled it down to a formula and constructed a successful sales patter. The trouble comes when the movie expresses these values outside of her worldview, when it becomes the amorphous messaging of the whole. Broadly and unpleasantly, Materialists is consistently anti-poor (and here poor means you earn 80K or less!), preoccupied to the point where you start questioning what it understands about the term. John is a saint (Evans has nailed those John Marago sad puppy-dog eyes), but his life is a caricature, constantly apologising for his class. And, in spite of Lucy’s hollow opening claims, comfortably remaining single on your own terms is dismissed as simply unthinkable. Unacknowledged failure.

Lucy may be a matchmaker, but there are mismatches in the casting. Johnson’s a tricky one, as her register often plays as aloof (she can act, but from movie to movie her level of effort seems variable). She’s engaged here (more-so than in the likes of Madame Web, at least), but her dalliances with Pedro Pascal’s far-more-engaging Harry are a little off-kilter, not to mention dramatically reminiscent of those Fifty Shades days. Pascal is the movie’s most charismatic feature and, as Johnson’s Lucy lists an itinerary of his perfections, it’s hard not to relish in the pleasure of his company. But it’s ultimately Harry’s wealth that is idealised. The man himself is just another victim of modern dating’s callous formula. 

Granted, Song aims for a cosier ending here than the bittersweet bon voyage of her previous feature (indeed Materialists slots back into comforting mode for its too-leisurely third act), but the damage has been done by then. The overwhelming – sometimes vehement – argument made during the opening two thirds is thoroughly depressing, making for a perpetual feel-bad time. The opposite, really, of those glossy, inviting trailers. Picking at these characters’ own self-worth, Materalists sets uncomfortably high standards, and often feels like its giving credence to the negative tendencies and biases in modern dating, as opposed to challenging them. Song’s fairy tale ending, when it comes, then feels compromised by the harsh realities waiting around the corner. It’s also soured by a small but crassly unbelievable aside that aims to wrap-up concerns for a rarely seen but pivotal secondary character, becoming incidentally ridiculous in the process.

In spite of sporadic qualities that remind us why Song came through as such a gifted storyteller, Materialists has catfished the audience into a dystopian depiction of modern dating, one more likely to conjure awkward contemplation than cuddles with a partner.