I personally feel that the marketing of ‘Materialists’ was all wrong. This film, the second feature-length film by Celine Song (who wrote and directed the wonderful ‘Past Lives’), is less of a rom-com, as it was marketed, and more an intricate exploration and study of how capitalism has twisted and warped the idea of modern love and dating. The three central characters at the center of ‘Materialists’ are so far removed from the usual characters of the romantic-comedy tropes. They are people who are either jaded or cynical about love, or who do not understand it at all, and are therefore driven by checklists and standardized metrics of desirability. One character sells the illusion of love, another buys into it, and the third is afraid to give it a chance because they have been hurt before.
The characters in ‘Materialists’ are either wrestling with the idea of love or buying into its marketing, yet they do not seem to know exactly what it is and how it should feel like. Thus, the usual thrill and electricity one expects from the genre are absent in this film. Instead, we are presented with philosophical positions about dating and romance, and we have to figure out if we’ve also been rendered numb by the social algorithm that we can deconstruct our desires into a checklist.
Lucy is a successful matchmaker in New York. At the start of the film, she celebrates her ninth successful match (one that led to a marriage proposal) but she herself can’t imagine finding someone for her own life. At her client’s wedding, she meets Harry, the groom’s brother, a very successful and attractive man in finance who is immediately smitten with her. At the same event, Lucy also reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, John, who is working in the catering staff of the wedding, who is also a struggling actor. John re-enters her life as a friend, though he clearly still has feelings for her, while Harry is dead set on dating the jaded and cynical matchmaker.
Plot-wise, it sounds like a great rom-com, except Song is much more intellectual than that. All the anxieties, fears, and attitudes of this generation are laid out on the table. Lucy is, at first, resistant to Harry, who in her job refer to as a “unicorn,” the perfect man. She feels she doesn’t deserve a man like him, who in her industry is reserved for the best of the best. In her own estimation, she doesn’t and wouldn’t be a proper match. For Lucy, romance and dating are all about the math. Harry, however, wants to prove her wrong. That the math is wrong because he likes her. He sees “value” in her, which instigates a shift for Lucy, who is growing tired of her industry and her clients’ unrealistic standards.
But then there’s John, who hasn’t really gotten out of the rut that he was in, that caused the breakup in the first place. But you can see there’s a comfort when Lucy is with him. A short hand. Interestingly enough, when things go bad for Lucy at work, the first person she calls is John.
What happens to the math now?
Celine Song uses these characters to really deconstruct and dissect how modern dating has been destroyed by capitalist tendencies – measuring people’s worth by their status, their appearance, by how much they make – and forces us to realign and shift our ideas about love back to that indescribable, undefinable abstract thing. The film can feel cold at times because the characters themselves can be cold. Dakota Johnson, who plays Lucy, seems incapable to gaining any chemistry with Chris Evans’ John or Pedro Pascal’s Harry until you see the spark and magic in certain scenes. It’s only then that you realise Johnson is purposefully breaking the chemistry because Lucy doesn’t think she’s ready for this. Evans’ John is tired and exhausted. Lucy has broken up with him before because of his unstable life and as he is still pretty much the same, he is only really there as a friend. And later on, as charming as Pascal plays Harry, his character’s own internal struggle reveals why his unicorn character never really burns passionately.
For those expecting a rom-com, they will be very unsatisfied. As the film seeks out to dispel the current contemporary obsession with unrealistic standards for romance, the film in itself, subverts the rom-com tropes and conventions. I love it for its understated and realistic view on the topic and its philosophical approach to a topic that is heavily guided by the emotions. The contrast, for me, is fascinating. But, yes, I wasn’t made giddy with excitement. It wasn’t thrilling. I had an intellectual response, not an emotional one.
My Rating:
Materialists is now showing. Check showtimes near you and experience Celine Song’s take on modern romance.
