Materialists
Which is exactly what Celine Song has chosen to do with her follow-up to her widely acclaimed, Oscar-nominated (and The Filmologist's #1 film of 2023) debut, "Past Lives." We follow a New York matchmaker named Lucy (Dakota Johnson) as she tries to crunch all the variables to find the best romantic partners for her clients, all while trying to figure out if she is actually capable of love herself. It helps that she is being wooed by two impossibly good-looking men, her poor, artist ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans) and the suave and spectacularly rich Harry (Pedro Pascal).
Probably the biggest key to whether or not you'll enjoy this movie is if you try to engage with it as a realistic story with authentic characters, or as primarily a piece of commentary on modern relationships. I chose the latter, and as such, enjoyed it quite a bit. That being said, it can be hard to get past some of the silliness. Most of the characters primarily serve as archetypes and only are the way they are in order to advance Lucy's growth journey, which itself is more of a message delivery device than an experience any real human would actually have. I can certainly see how this would be offputting to some; for better or for worse, Song seems to have prioritized the message over the narrative this time around.
Take Johnson's character, Lucy. She is cold, robotic, and only concerned with the stats. She only sees people as objects to be categorized in such a way that they can be mathematically matched up with someone else who checks all of their same boxes. She stops people on the street and tells them they would be a perfect candidate, or uses casual conversation to collect pertinent data for potential clients. Maybe we as humans do this in real life -- we are certainly always evaluating and judging others, especially if we're single -- but Lucy is a judger to the extreme.
Lucy represents what Song sees as the biggest issue with dating apps and matchmaking services: they try and translate everything that makes a person who they are into neat little statistics. If a man is a certain height, makes a certain amount of money, has a certain level of attractiveness, or achieves a certain level of fitness, they can then be marketed to women based on the levels that they desire. Love is nothing more than a numbers game, a formula that spits out your future partner based on a compatible socioeconomic profile and family history.
Lucy starts to see the cracks in her philosophy when one of her clients has a scary moment with a suitor that Kate determined to be a suitable match. When her angry client confronts her wanting to know why she was set up with this dangerous man, Lucy can only sheepishly say that he "checked a lot of your boxes." Thus, the film's major message: there is no way to tell what someone is really like before you actually get to know them. It doesn't matter if they are rich, poor, hot, ugly, six feet or less, these are all material things.
Further hammering this home is the central romantic triangle between Kate, the wealthy Harry and the poor, downtrodden John. Harry is exactly what Kate considers to be an ideal match on paper: lots of money, fit, attractive, with similar goals and a charming personality. And then there's John, a dirt-broke struggling actor who lives with crazy roommates and has no future prospects. Kate and John have already broken up before because even though John is great and they were really were in love, Kate couldn't see herself not eventually resenting John for his lack of money, denying her the life she felt she wanted.
You can, of course, see where things are headed. Sure, it's not exactly a brain-busting realization that money and looks aren't everything, but it might bear repeating in the context of a dating app environment that places immense value on material things to even initiate a first date. And if that first date wasn't perfect? There's always more matches in a never-ending quest to find that perfect statistical match. Song is telling us that this method is no way to find real love or any kind of actual happiness, and sure, while that is a pretty simplistic and seemingly obvious view of things, it's also one that is certainly worth repeating.
It's hard to truly gauge Dakota Johnson's performance becuase she is playing the human embodiment of cold, unemotional numbers. If that was the goal, she does it well, always speaking in a calm, robotic monotone, gazing at her co-stars with analytic scans. Pedro Pascal is handsome and charming, as required, as is Chris Evans appropriately a little more weathered and beaten down (even though he still has the fortune to look like Chris Evans). It would have been nice to make these three central characters feel a little more like people (especially Johnson), and I think it could've been done in a way that didn't detract from the message. As such, there is still a certain level of undeniable magnetism between the leads that is a joy to watch, perhaps due to their own materialistic qualities, in what is likely another meta-statement being made.
While the thematic material may be mostly surface level, it's still a fairly accurate reflection of the times, adequately skewering the transactional nature of modern dating. Where "Past Lives" was all about emotion and unspoken feeling, "Materialists" is more thoughtful and analytical, well observed but slightly cold, like a first date with someone who's a pretty good time but clearly not cut out to form any deeply meaningful connection.
