Materialists

After loving Celine Song's debut feature Past Lives, the trailers for her sophomore effort had me skeptical. They were selling it as a standard 90s romcom, where the romantic lead chooses between the new rich guy and an old flame with no money, which audiences have seen a million times before. Given Song's prior demonstrated ability to tell an unconventional story swimming with nuanced emotions, I worried such a rote story structure would fail to showcase her outstanding talents. There were a few hints that maybe something else was going on, such as the line "the math doesn't add up", and A24's "Are you really six feet tall?" height charts. But I walked into the theater hesitant.

I needn't have worried.

We open on a gorgeous canyon, then focus in on a small group of early, non-verbal humans. A male returns to the cave with a bundle of flowers, where he's met by a female who presents him a bundle of tools. He forms one of the flowers into a ring, slides it over her finger, then we cut to the title card. This little five minute scene is so simple, so small, and yet immediately seeds Lucy's worldview, while Song also shows us we were wrong to ever doubt her.

The movie's superstructure is the aforementioned recognizable framework. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a single woman in her 30s, living in NYC, resigned to the idea that love maybe just isn't for her. She works as a matchmaker, and while at a client's wedding, she meets his brother Harry (Pedro Pascal) and they hit it off. At the same wedding, she runs into John (Chris Evans), whom we eventually learn she dated for around five years, ending nearly a decade ago. As if within the pages of a Jane Austen novel, she must choose between financial security or past passion.

However, Song uses this formula as a playground, to show its deficiencies, and to comment on the modern world more broadly. For one, Lucy isn't distressed by the lack of romance in her life; she seems quite content to wait for the perfect partner to show up. Her view of dating is finding someone whose list of non-negotiables is most compatible with your own, which suits her well as a matchmaker, especially at a firm trying to Moneyball relationships. Those checklists read like a scout's stat sheet. Height, salary, economic background, parental marital status, and a host of other details go into determining a prospect's value, in turn determining the pool in which they get to swim. To them, marriage is best approached as a business relationship, an exchange of capital that only makes sense if their formula dictates both parties derive value from the other. They don't speak of a dowry, but the heavy focus on salary as one of if not the the most important details makes it feel like they are.

What's most interesting about that is how putting recognizable conversations in economic terms makes it so much more uncomfortable. Real people do speak of salary and what physical attributes and characteristic make others attractive to prospective partners. They talk about bettering themselves. They talk about compatibility. But phrasing such discussions in the language of the stock market makes it so much more impersonal, so much more ugly. It strips away any consideration of emotional compatibility, and leads to the belief that taking extreme action to increase your "value" is worthwhile if you can afford it, such as increasing your height by breaking your legs. Song further heightens the discomfort by sitting in these conversations far longer than you'd expect. There's a particular dinner during which Lucy tries to explain to Harry why he's wasting his time with her, and he counters with why he's not. By all counts, it should be romantic. But the language of value and investment and returns remove any chance of that. Both are so scared of love and relationships that they drain all the emotion out of dating in an attempt to control the risk, a task they (especially Lucy) fails at pretty resoundingly.

Crucial to selling such an alien outlook is Dakota Johnson. Without her, I don't think the movie would work. Which is weird to say, because as always, I don't think her performance is all that good. She's so cold, distant, and stilted, emphasized by her constantly flat affect. The one emotion she's capable of conveying is distress/confusion. All of which is perfect for this film. If she was a warm presence, if she displayed a ton of chemistry with Chris Evans, if she seemed the least bit put-off by her job, we wouldn't buy her as this person. Any other actor's attempts to stay at such a remove would feel unnatural, but that describes Johnson's default screen presence, so it works.

The two men help, as both fit so wonderfully into their roles. Pascal is a similar performer to Johnson, but with about 30% more charm and the ability to emote. As such, he comes off cool as a cucumber, and we understand how he's able to win her over despite her initial reservations. But he also seems a bit uncomfortable in the dating scene, also unable to see it as anything other than a business transaction, perfectly complimenting Lucy. Evans, on the other hand, showed up ready to remind us that he can act. He slots so easily into the role of regular guy, just trying to make it. He's the most relatable person in the whole damn film, and the only one we spend any time with who embodies the human approach to relationships. He's the one who's lovelorn, although he's got enough going on in his life that we understand why he's not chasing her, just making it clear that he's around. It means he's in the movie less than you may expect, but he's charming as hell every moment he's on screen. All of it plays so well into the idea of a dude who's hung up on a past love although not defined by it, and thus why he'd ignore their limited rapport (for better or for worse), signalling that we should, too.

While its bizarre tone will definitely put off some, I'd argue its only true weakness is the ending. Or rather, its refusal to end. Whereas Song found the perfect ending for Past Lives, a single, powerful image that reduced most audience members to tears (myself included), the end of Materialists is the only place her confidence really falters. The last four scenes or so all feel very final, so when it finally cuts to credits, you're more relieved than touched. Even more frustrating, a couple of the earlier moments would have been more impactful and better emphasized what the rest of the movie was saying through imagery rather than words. Given that these scenes contain some great moments and beautiful shots, it's easy to see why she couldn't bring herself to cut anything. But in doing so, she began to lose the thread.

Still, a drawn out conclusion cannot destroy what Song pulls off in the rest of the film. The swirling concoction of characters cannot help but evoke deep emotion from its viewers, as we understand all the nuances and implications of their interactions, even if they don't. The dialog is wonderfully crafted, successfully steering your expectations such that you feel it each time it's subverted in some way, even if you saw it coming. It's a great exploration of love and dating, and solidifies that Song is here to stay as an important voice speaking with authority and care on deep, personal relationships for however long she wants.