In 2023, writer-director Celine Song made her feature debut with Past Lives, a wistful romantic drama about the reunion of two once-close childhood friends who were separated when her family emigrated from South Korea to Canada two decades and the feelings of longing and uncertainty that it inspires in both of them, and made the kind of splash that most filmmakers hardly even dare to dream of—the film went on to win the Audience Favorite prize at Sundance, received rave reviews, earned a decent amount of money at the box office and earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Original Screenplay. Because of all the attention that the film received, it was only natural that her follow-up project would get a lot of attention from wanting to know if both she and the film would live up to all the hype or if she was merely the latest victim of what is referred to as the “sophomore curse.” That follow-up has arrived in the form of Materialists and while its offbeat nature might confound and frustrate those simply looking for the equivalent of Past Lives II, this blend of relationship drama, romantic comedy and social satire is, despite occasional bits of unevenness, a thoughtful, canny and often very funny work that takes a lot of big swings, connects more often than not and offers further proof that Song is indeed the real deal.
Set in New York City, the story centers around Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a woman who works as a matchmaker for a company that, for what are presumably extravagant fees, will bring together people who are looking for romance and want something a little less sketchy than a dating app. The joke, of course, is that while the promise of romance is what Lucy is selling, the reality of the process proves to be something altogether different. Clients check off a list of quantifiable attributes that they are looking for in a potential partner as if they were picking the features that they want in a car purchase—age, net worth, height and the like (height proving to be an especially important point here)—and Lucy finds two who check off enough of each other’s boxes and has them meet up in the hopes that sparks will fly. This is hardly a scientific process, of course, and can be stymied by a client like Sophie (Zoe Winters), a woman who is smart, charming, successful and engaging but not in the ways that stand out in a process dominated by more tangible qualities. However, Lucy appears to be good at her job—if a bit cynical about the whole process—and as the film opens, she is about to attend the ninth marriage borne from her initial efforts.
Significantly, Lucy herself is currently unattached but winds up unexpectedly hitting it off at the wedding with the groom’s brother Harry (Pedro Pascal), who is wealthy, suave, smart, handsome and tall enough to check all the boxes on the forms she gives her clients. At the same time, she also happens to run into John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor making ends meet as a caterer whom she dated for five years before breaking up with him, in no small part because of the money troubles that the two were facing. By all logical standards, Harry would be the ideal choice but although Lucy is attracted to him (not to mention his apartment), his interest in her leaves her a bit befuddled—why would he be attracted to someone in her mid-30s making only $80,000 a year when he could obviously do much better partner-wise? At the same time, while she still has feelings for John, who is still trying to make his dreams of stardom come true, her memories of their earlier financial issues are bitter enough to suggest that she has no interest in going through them again even though he still has a number of the qualities that one would be lucky to find in a potential partner but which would not check any of the boxes on her forms.
The pre-release hype on Materialists suggested that it was going to be a straight-on romantic comedy and indeed, the basic premise sounds like the kind of instantly forgettable trifle that Sandra Bullock (or, if she was busy, perhaps Monica Potter) might have ground out back in the 90s when the genre was at a commercial peak. While the film has any number of very funny scenes along those lines, to regard it simply as an ordinary rom-com ultimately sells the film and its ambitions quite short. What Song is trying to do here is to take the standards tropes and devices that are synonymous with the genre and explore them with more depth, precision and insight than one might expect. For example, in most rom-coms, we are used to the characters somehow being blissfully free of most financial issues—unless the narrative specifically revolves around their workplaces, we see the characters at their jobs maybe once or twice over the course of the story and they all seem to have large and well-appointed apartments to reside in. Here, not only does Song offer a more realistic portrayal of the finances involved but makes it one of the key themes of the film. At first, when we observe Lucy discussing the financial situations of prospective dates to her clients, it sounds amusingly shallow but as we get to know Lucy more, we realize through her just how much pressure finances can have on a relationship—in one of the more memorable scenes, we get a flashback to a disastrous anniversary with John in which the lack of money helped to torch both the night and their future together. The material comforts that Harry represents are undeniably appealing to Lucy (the scene in which she regards his apartment for the first time is particularly inspired) but at the same time, she has a certain degree of self-loathing in regards to how she let monetary concerns drive a wedge between her and John.
There are other aspects in which Song tries to push the film beyond the standard genre trappings into unexpected areas. For starters, she makes the smart decision to avoid the trap that too often arises in most cinematic romantic triangles by making one of the participants so off-putting in some way that it is no real surprise how things will proceed—Harry, despite his wealth and power, seems to be a decent-enough guy and might well have been the ultimate prize in another story. Adding to the general feel of realism is Song’s decision to shift tones at times in order to point out the unavoidable darker side of blind dating and how a number of checked-off boxes does not always give a full picture of who a prospective partner really is and what they are actually capable of doing. These complexities may seem a little off-putting to those looking for a straightforward rom-com—normally of the most heedless of screen genres—but they ultimately make for a richer viewing experience in the end.
Materialists also benefits from some pitch-perfect casting in the central roles as well. Over the last few years, Dakota Johnson has proven to be one of the most valuable screen presences around—she can make a terrible movie into something close to tolerable (as bad as clinkers like Madame Web and the Fifty Shades franchise were—and they were dreadful—they would have been infinitely worse without her) and a good movie into something genuinely exciting. (Either way, she can also be counted on for inspired turns on the promotional circuit.) Here, she navigates all the aspects of Lucy’s character—seemingly shallow at first before revealing certain depth—with a wonderfully nuanced performance that nails both the comedic elements and well as the more serious-minded material that slowly begins to creep in and the result is arguably her best performance to date. As the rivals for her affections, Evans and Pascal are quite good as well—I cannot recall Evans ever being as engaging as he is here while Pascal takes what could have been the most potentially cartoonish part of the triangle and skillfully avoids all the cliches in order to make him into a three-dimensional person as well instead of merely a Baxter with a big bank account. And while she may not be on the posters or anything, Zoe Winters is just as important to the success of the film as well with her alternately funny and touching work as the troublesome client whose experiences begin to crystallize for Lucy everything that is wrong about the materialistic mindset that she is offering to those who can afford her services.
At its core, Materialists is ultimately a film about romance and commerce—two aspects of life that many proclaim to be experts on but which few ever seem to truly understand—and explores them with genuine wit and trenchant insight that is far closer in tone and spirit to the works of Edith Wharton than Nora Ephron. More significantly, it confirms Celine Song as one of the most intriguing new filmmaking talents to come along in a while. I suspect that in the wake of the surprise success of Past Lives, she was inundated with offers to make any number of mundane studio projects in exchange for a big payday. Instead, she has presented us with a lovely, touching, occasionally quite weird (the opening sequence is so odd that I found myself wondering if the wrong film was playing even though her opening credit had already appeared on the screen) and ultimately quite personal work that demonstrates her growing ambitions behind the camera without sacrificing the aspects of her work that caused her earlier film to strike a chord with so many people. I have no idea what her next film might be but, based on the extraordinary results of her first two, I cannot wait to see what it might be.