Last night I saw and generally approved of Celine Song‘s Materialists (A24, 6.13), a cleverly written, agreeably performed, better-than-decent romantic drama about a Manhattan matchmaker (Dakota Johnson‘s 35-year-old Lucy) that has been shamefully mis–described by A24 and certain critics as a romantic comedy.
Materialists is a good, mostly honest, mid-range relationship film about the misery of urban singlehood while struggling under the ghetto terms of a lower-than-six-figure lifestyle.
It’s a respectable attempt to convey how delusional and child-like people are about how attractive they believe themselves to be and what kind of romantic partner they can land. It’s about how love, money and common sense are fairly incompatible these days, and what learning to settle can feel like, and as such is an admirably non-delusional movie for adults.
This in itself makes Materialists much, much better than Song’s Past Lives (’23), which I found mostly tolerable and at the same time infuriating because I believed almost none of it.
The overall tone of Materialists is not really romantic as much as resigned if not verging on semi-bleak, and while a few moments are briefly amusing it’s certainly not played for laughs — it’s a frank look at the business and terms of urban dating these days, and man, I really felt sorry for the principal characters in this film — the relentlessly analytical Lucy; Chris Evans‘ impoverished John, a 37 year-old barely working actor who is not looking at any kind of career turnaround or financial breakthrough but who absolutely loves Lucy without qualification; and Pedro Pascal‘s rich, mature and smoothly mannered Harry Castillo.
Mostly I was saying to myself, “For all the honesty and reality-assessing this film is putting out, I’m really glad to have lived and revelled in a bygone era in which innocently or instinctually falling in love or even lust was something people occasionally succumbed to and just went with…I really lucked out because the joy of getting lost in the delusional joy of primal attraction…that deep-down, seat-of-the-pants feeling seems to have evaporated or fallen by the wayside as dating among the six-figure set in 2025 seems like a fairly miserable ordeal, and at the end of the day nobody seems all that happy, much less satisfied.
Honestly? Because Materialists doesn’t deliver much in the way of spiritual lift or bounce at the end, I don’t think it’s going to be especially popular with the schmoes.
Like A Streetcar named Desire‘s Blanche Dubois, Joe and Jane Popcorn generally don’t want realism but magic. Illusions and escapism will trump harsh realities each and every time.
And yet I respect Song for making the kind of no-bullshit “romantic” film that she has — for playing it fairly straight and not adhering to the usual romcom tropes. In so doing she earns integrity points and then some.
And yet Song does try to romanticize and bliss things out toward the very end, and I didn’t believe this turn in the story at all. But to explain my thinking, I’ll need to spoil things a bit. So from here on SPOILERS will occasionally surface, although I’ll try to stick to generalities.
Situation #1: If a youngish career woman has broken off a relationship with an all-but-penniless actor because she can’t stand the oppression of poverty, how the hell does she manage to change her mind at the end of the film by saying in effect “Okay, poverty is a drag but I guess I can roll with it in the long run”? What ambitious, well-educated woman has ever come to this conclusion?
Situation #2: If an actor hasn’t experienced a semblance of career combustion by age 37, the odds of him suddenly catching on and enjoying a surge of even limited success are astronomically negative.
Situation #3: How many women over the centuries have married wealthy, nice-looking guys that they’re not head-over-heels in love with, but whom they “like” (i.e., are willing to submit to sexually), admire and get along with? I personally love romantic tales in which people get married for love and love alone, but how realistic is that? There has to be some kind of practical hope that things will get better financially.
And what is so terrible about marrying a rich, Pedro Pascal type of guy even if you don’t love him? He’s handsome, kind, considerate, polite and a well-mannered gentleman. A lot of people get married to this or that romantic partner because they “check a lot of boxes”.
Situation #4: Who the hell chooses Iceland as an ideal romantic getaway destination? Fucking Iceland?
Situation #5: Song casts negative aspersions upon one of Lucy’s female clients, a paleface, because she’s mostly interested in finding a white boyfriend or husband. When this is revealed it’s clear that Lucy (i.e., Song) is vaguely appalled or even disgusted. Which is bullshit wokeism.
What’s so awful about a bird of a particular feather wanting to mate with someone from his or her own flock? Song is presumably aware that some POCs prefer the romantic company of men or women from their own tribe. She’s presumably aware that some years ago Denzel Washington stated that he’s uncomfortable kissing white women in his films, and that he prefers hooking up with women of color. And yet whites aren’t allowed to voice similar feelings.
Situation #6: There are two or three interview segments in which Lucy is asking her clients what they’re ideally looking for and the kind of man or woman they don’t want to end up with, and some of their demands and standards are flat-out hilarious.
An attractive 48 year-old guy with nice hair says he only wants women in their late 20s because they’re too immature in their early 20s and they tend to get too desperate in their 30s. Good God!
My favorite is a blonde, twerpy-looking woman who looks mid-40ish and is frankly close to homely…this woman says to Lucy in all sincerity that she’s “a catch”. Is it better for a woman in her appearance class to say “I’m homely and probably too old for most men and therefore no catch”? No — it’s better to have a positive self-image, but my God, this woman is dreaming! If I was in the market and ran into this woman in a bar or at a party, I’d smile and chuckle and politely duck away at the first opportunity.
Situation #7: Lucy has learned that women on the hunt really don’t like shortish guys. They want tall and then some. I’ver been six-foot-plus since I was 13 or 14 so no problems on this end, and I’ve always had broad shoulders which, from a female perspective, is a plus in the same sense of guys preferring women with large breasts.
But guys making themselves taller through surgical measures (like Ronan Farrow reportedly did) is an actual thing in Song’s film, and a certain character admitting toward the end of the film that he added inches to his height through surgery is…well, it’s weird. As in very.
Situation #8: How does a single professional woman afford a nice, reasonably sized Manhattan or Brooklyn apartment on a lousy $80K-per-year salary?
Situation #9: Cave men who hunted with spears and brought home animal meat for the family did not, as a rule, gaze at their wives with tenderness in their eyes, and they sure as shit didn’t slip rings adorned with flower petals upon their wife’s marriage finger. Materialists begins with such a scene, and it really doesn’t work….it immediately throws the film off its tracks and makes you wonder if Song has gone ga-ga.
Friendo: “I think it plays like a good indie film rather than a romcom. It will therefore most likely do indie-film numbers rather than romcom numbers.”
