Materialists review: Celine Song secures her bag as a romance movie auteur

In Celine Song’s Materialists, the follow up feature to her astonishing debut Past Lives, Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a professional matchmaker who only thinks of love in terms of mathematics.

Lucy’s formula is simple. A couple with similar salaries, upbringings, work/life balance and looks should, according to her maths, be soulmates – but veer outside of that formula and you’re certainly doomed.

The rational makes sense, considering her entire livelihood rides on successfully bringing lonely singles together – the business of which frames all marriages as a successful merger between companies.

It also makes sense in the high-rise littered, uber-competitive New York City, which is captured so lushly by Shabier Kurshner’s camera.

Lucy, a successful business woman, is quite happy staying single. But when a former flame (Chris Evans) returns to her life at the same time a wealthy, kind gentleman (Pedro Pascal) is taking an interest in courting her, Lucy naturally starts running the equations.

And I need to say one thing first: it must be a recession indicator when even the romcom leads can’t stop worrying about their income, property and investment every five minutes.

Watch the trailer for Materialists:

I am a Materialists girl

Aesthetically gorgeous, endlessly romantic and stealthily funny, Materialists is a romcom that melds together classic tropes of the genre with modern sensibilities.

It’s an obvious monetary upgrade for Song, and carries a lot of star-led appeal. The most obvious selling point is the supposed ‘love triangle’ between Johnson, Pascal and Evans – but for those worried about Song’s potential sell out, just know that this far from an ordinary, formulaic ‘chick flick’ (I resent using the phrase even as a type it).

Instead of a typical plot where the two men would usually duke it out – verbally, physically, or even psychologically – for the woman’s heart, Materialists shuns expectation. The men – being the economically challenged John (Evans) and rich bachelor Harry (Pascal) – hardly interact at all, and instead the lens focuses on Lucy’s gradual emergence from her self-imposed shallowness.

Resisting the trope of a protagonist who’s ‘not like other girls’, Song presents Lucy with a dilemma where her love life could become threatened due to a serious issue faced by one of her female clients. Instead of knocking other women down to enhance Lucy’s main character status, the narrative lifts them up and ensures the protagonist puts them first.

ScreenHub: Past Lives portrays lost love and identity in the Korean diaspora

Do Materialists dream of Past Lives?

As seen in Past Lives, Song has a knack for capturing the multitudes of emotion that take place in the silent moments between characters. As a clear deft hand at directing actors in romantic narratives, she pulls the best out of Johnson, Pascal and Evans – with the latter delivering one of his best performances in years.

The film also reveals Song’s comedic sensibilities, which are subtle, quiet and clever. Dakota Johnson is on the ball, perfectly utilising her natural deadpan delivery and extremely dry sense of humour. But often jokes will go by without a wink from the audience, which forces me to conclude that not everyone will ‘get it’.

Where the film falters is in its obvious targeted approach to being more relatable, which often translates in Hollywood to ‘all white, all star cast’. They may be great actors, and look stunning (I’m not afraid to admit I was largely there for the eye candy), but in comparing Materialists to Past Lives, the latter has exponentially more depth and nuance. And I think that’s in large part thanks to Song’s inherent understanding of the Korean diaspora in the US.

In other words, as wonderful as it looks and feels, nothing in Materialists hits quite as hard as hard as the concept of In-Yun.

Materialists falls short of being as insightful and revelatory as Past Lives, but that’s to be expected. Song hit a home run on her first game – now she’s simply securing her Hollywood bag and taking a well-earned victory lap.

Good for her.

Materialists is out in cinemas now.