Materialists

A romantic comedy without passion or humor

Lacking in romance and devoid of comedy, Materialists tests the limits of what people are willing to call a romantic comedy. In her second feature, Celine Song revisits the concept of triangular yearning from her faux-arthouse debut Past Lives, this time with a higher budget, bigger stars, and a trailer that evokes a mature piece of mainstream entertainment from days gone by. For those who haven’t seen the trailer — and for a film like this, I think you should watch the trailer, because it goes just as deep in its critique of the titular -ism and how class and romance intersect in two minutes as the feature does in its bloated 117 — Dakota Johnson plays a matchmaker at a high-end firm with high-rise office space in Manhattan. Her job is introduced as a numbers game, and the logical endpoint of emotionally detached bourgeois superficiality. At a wedding for one of her clients, she’s introduced to a wealthy potential client-cum-suitor in Pedro Pascal, and reintroduced to her cater-waiter and failing actor ex, Chris Evans. Will she fall for the allure of high finance and constant vacations, or back into the arms of the poor, Bernie-voting artist she calls her soulmate within the first fifteen minutes? I’ve never seen a set-up in this genre that telegraphs its ending with such vivid clarity, and I’ve watched most of those bad late period Woody Allen movies. Early on, I realized that I had never before seen Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, or Pedro Pascal star in a good movie. That was not going to change.

Before heading to the theater, I saw the A24 account post a “syllabus” for the film on X - The Everything App.

The tweet was in response to Sean Fennessey of The Ringer lamenting that he had not worked up one of his signature curricula of influence for this release. Forget the murky territory of a distributor chumming it up on the tl with a “critic” (and these scare quotes are doing some Herculean lifting), and look to the list. Bookended with masterpieces by one of the greatest architects of the genre’s history, Brooks’ Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment, littered with off-canon picks that indicate a sense of deep character work and class critique through realism (Mike Leigh), ironic comedy of uncomfortability and young adult malaise (The Graduate), high art that can use a family to stand in for cultural memory (Yi-Yi), cynicism, gallows humor, and spontaneity (Altman¹), and bringing modern stylings to classicism (Pride and Prejudice). However, none of these qualities are to be found anywhere on screen.

Much like the arthouse posturing of Past Lives, A24 and Celine Song are using these influences to score points with cinephiles, and make them think that Materialists is better, more important, or of a higher brow than it actually is. It’s not even pretension, it’s more like condescension; catering to an online audience that feels they need a bit of sophistication, while also marketing the film on TV and in trailers in a way that could trick your mother into thinking it might be a Nancy Meyers-type joint. If it had an ounce of Meyers’ dedication to situational comedy and broad entertainment, it wouldn’t be so dead on arrival. The form of the film splits the difference just like the marketing. There’s no showy long-takes or images that I’ll misremember as being in 4:3 due to their Instagramability like in Past Lives, but it never devolves into pure televisual coverage either. Song is clearly a director with a lot of intentionality in her camerawork, but I’m not sure she knows where to put it.

The film is bookended by a page straight out of the Tree of Life playbook, as we see “the first couple”, cave people, get engaged with a flower ring in between sessions of hunting and gathering. This is to show that economics have always played a part in dating and marriage. I’m sure that plenty of smarter leftist critics will write tomes about that aspect of the movie, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t even think a rabid anti-communist who is proud to use his money for wife-purchasing could watch that shit with a straight face.

Chris Evans lives in squalor, sharing an apartment with two dudes, and slipping on used condoms like they’re banana peels. The cabinets won’t shut and there’s no hot water. It’s shot in unbearable handheld. Pedro Pascal’s apartment cost $12 million. It’s shot like a bad Soderbergh impersonation, all off-kilter wide shots that exaggerate the emptiness of his apartment and implicate their romance as… material. This is not a film for those who enjoy subtlety.

The dialogue is dreadful. Anybody who talks about self-worth and value as much as these characters does so because they talk to one person more than anyone else: their therapist. The therapy-speak of the script is painfully leaden, and to be a bit uncharitable, often feels written to be screenshot upon the film’s home media release, with a “me fr” caption on social media. I know that accusing a filmmaker of clipfarming is about as cynical as it gets, but may I direct your attention to her Tarkovskian nod to herself with the poster for the play that Chris Evans stars in? Yeah, real boss move there, you exist in the world of your film as a playwright. You have to remember that when Andrei Tarkovsky put the poster for Andrei Rublev in the set decoration for Mirror, he had MADE ANDREI RUBLEV.

A movie has not made me this angry in a long time. I was very patient at the top of this blog, but now my words are getting shorter and my impulse to hit the caps lock grows stronger. I just remembered the incredibly tasteless sexual assault subplot, which felt like Song sticking a fucking fork in the toaster. The less said about that, the better. The period hardly suffices as an endnote to my thoughts. This is a film that deserves exclamation points at the end of obscenity-laden sentences, and nothing more! This movie is shit! Celine Song, you are a officially 0 for 2! Better luck next time!

if you think that these three are worthy of leading films, to use the therapy-speak of the film, you need to value yourself and your time more. (watch better movies)

1. *Hey, A24, would it kill you to amend the mislabeled year of Gosford Park?