★★★★ - EMPIRE
- A different beast to Past Lives, this is a razor-sharp look at the competitive marketplace of dating: both rigorously honest and idealistically romantic. -
The opening of Materialists is not what you might expect from a modern-day, New York-set romantic-comedy. It begins in a cave — the least romantic of all places, surely — with an enigmatic and strangely beautiful wordless prologue, in which a caveman presents a cavewoman with a wedding ring made of flowers. Early doors, writer-director Celine Song is subverting our expectations, arguing that love is and always has been a primal, ancient, essential dance. This is fundamental stuff.
So much of Materialists is not what you might expect from a romcom. Like her feature film debut, the exquisite 2023 drama Past Lives, it’s a grown-up and thoughtful look at how adults actually feel and interact in the real world — and like that last film, features three people with possibly conflicting desires. Cannily, Song centres the action around someone whose entire professional life is in love: Lucy (Dakota Johnson, brilliantly poised and powerful) is an expert at dating maths, responsible for nine marriages, and a friend, confidante and effective therapist to her clients. But her personal life does not match up to these standards — until hunky rich person Harry (Pedro Pascal) and equally hunky poor person John (Chris Evans), her ex, (re)enter her life.
Where so much of Past Lives was found in the unspoken, in the profound silences, much of Materialists is found in the spoken. Song leans on her playwright past to craft a dense, witty, verbose script, full of competing theses on modern relationships, especially in New York’s famously ruthless dating scene. “Love is the last religion,” offers one character. “Marriage is a business deal,” offers another. “It’s just dating — it’s not that serious,” suggests one. “Who our partner is determines our whole life,” counters another.
This is a film with the costume of a romcom but a brain and heart to challenge easy tropes. Dating, we are told here, is a question of value, a symbol of status and worth. But what happens when people are simply commodified into merchandise? And why would anyone engage in modern dating if it’s actually highly unpleasant, driven by obsessions with height, and rife with “known risks” for women, as one character coldly puts it?
Yet as those cave people remind us, we still do it. The outlook here is cynical but hopeful. Song does engage in a bit of movie-star fantasy, her three leads always impeccably dressed and implausibly beautiful, and while it chastely lacks some much-needed sexual tension or frisson — not to mention the searing, aching yearning of Past Lives — there is something undeniably pleasing about watching gorgeous people intelligently navigate love in a meaningful way. To unravel these mysteries, we finally understand, is an ancient need.
- John Nugent, EMPIRE
Materialists is now playing at Light House Cinema!