Materialists could probably be considered a romantic comedy, except it’s never altogether clear that writer-director Celine Song, best known for 2022’s bittersweet Past Lives, is actually heading that way. You may wonder whether she isn’t willing to risk ending the film with no one blissfully in love, with forever-after consigned to the dustbin. She makes Jane Austen look like a sentimental sap. This, despite the fact that Materialists has been constructed according to rom-com tradition (eligible woman—a matchmaker!— vs. two eligible men) and cast with Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans, three actors with sex appeal and box-office value.
But Materialists isn’t so much about finding Mr. Right as about steering clear of Mr. Wrong, which suggests a very rum rom-com. Even the title, with its hints of money and consumption, sounds cold and vaguely condemnatory, like a Marxist critique of And Just Like That….
I’m not saying this is a bad thing, not in the least. Materialists is a swipe-right experience — elusive but not inscrutable, as well as enjoyably, delicately playful.
That playfulness is established at the very outset by a whimsically odd fantasy scene. In what looks like a primitive world not much further evolved from the apes’ society at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a rather sweet if shaggy young man comes to court a sweet if shaggy young woman outside her family’s cave. These two will return at the end, bringing the film full circle.
Until then, you’ll have been in the charming, somewhat tensile company of matchmaker Lucy (Johnson), a single career woman with an affluent clientele (the cave couple, apparently, didn’t need Lucy’s kind of assistance). She’s good at her job, and grateful, given the failure of her early attempt at an acting career. So far she’s led nine couples to the altar: The key is selling the notion of lifelong commitment (a partner, as she puts it, should ultimately be “a grave buddy”) while skillfully calculating the social, professional and fiduciary value of any prospective match.
Those calculations, needless to share, aren’t shared with Lucy’s clients, but processed in some amorphous zone between her head and her heart.
Lucy isn’t cynical, exactly. But, to borrow from Joni Mitchell, she’s seen life from both sides now — and the hell with fairy-tale clouds and old boyfriends like John (Evans). Unlike Lucy, John remains an eternally struggling actor — he’s 39 — who makes ends meet with catering gigs. He and Lucy meet, again, at a wedding reception, where she’s dressed in diaphanous blue — the blue at the center of a candle flame — and he delivers a drink order to her table. He remembers that she likes a Coke with a beer. She, on the other hand, remembers that as a couple they were always running out of money, and always fighting because of it. Compared to those days, she’s sitting pretty, and wants to sit more prettily still.
You don’t dislike Lucy for preferring the comforts of affluence, partly because Johnson hits this particular note with a kind of triste regretfulness — she always looks as if she has no choice but to smile wanly, since the other option is probably sobbing. Perhaps just as importantly, though, Materialists appreciates that what could be called an lifestyle aspiration is its own, undeniable form of desire. It may not swell the spirits, and the cave couple, who make do with a flower for an engagement ring, might have thrown up if they knew how civilized people approached marriage. But anyone who’s ever lived in Manhattan has gone through this luxury lust. It’s been corrupting urban souls since, at least, William Makepeace Thackeray gave Chapter 36 of Vanity Fair the ironic title “How to Live Well on Nothing a Year.”
Atsushi Nishijima
And so, instead of rediscovering her love for John, Lucy drifts, rather casually, into an affair with the rich, dashing Harry (Pedro Pascal), who happens to be a perfect gentleman with a $15 million penthouse, good taste and an attractively dry, modest sense of humor. It’s like dating a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pascal is really pretty wonderful here — and he overshadows Evans, who’s handsome and likable, but stuck in a less sophisticated role. (If anything, Evans is the closest thing here to rom-com.) Pascal is like a more poetic Winklevoss twin. He might write quality fiction on the side — not too literary, but publishable.
And yet Lucy can always see that she’s allowing herself to be wooed without ever being wowed. With Harry, life will be everything but wow.
Then — finally — the movie blossoms into something like happiness. But you should discover that surprise for yourself.
The shimmeringly lovely Johnson, who navigates Lucy’s journey with unerring grace and tact, has long been an actress in search of — and deserving — the perfect vehicle. This may be it.
Materialists is currently in theaters.
