(The editor’s note: The following article contains spoilers for Celine songS “Materialists“Which is now in theaters.)
“Materialists” have all goods: an Oscar-nominated author, a Rom-Com-Hjärthrob, a “Fifty Shades of Gray” -Lalum that happens to be Hollywood-Royalty, a viral baby of the internet that led an adaptation of video games and not one, but two MCU-Superhero
This as Dakota JohnsonMatchmaker Lucy would say, checking all the boxes to be a high concept here. And yet the author/director Celine Song undermines everything – and that’s the point.
Singing Sophomore has “materialists” is not a removal of the Rom-Com genre (Although IndieWires Kate Erbland makes a good case that it is). Rather, it is a hollow of the notion that all attributes and all statistics behind selling yourself in the dating market and Sells one film to theater guests, will lead to happiness, love or audience spending more At the checkout.
Lucy (who will surely go down as one of Johnson’s most iconic characters) tells us that this ourselves on the screen: being a matchmaker for the elite is like being something as practical as a mortality or as pragmatic as being an insurance claim. Being a filmmaker in modern Hollywood, especially in Big Studios there ”Art is made by the Committee“As Johnson himself has often said, it is no different.
Non-independent films are made within an algorithm that is expected to appeal to wide audience; Lucy explains that if there is no broad appeal for a person, they must work in a “niche market.” The same can be said for movies today. Song, especially after her beloved functional director’s debut “past life” that threw her into the festival circle and the price machine, knows this. And Song undermines this hard truth by packing the bow into the “shiny package” of the Rom-com genre that is dense around the audience’s throats.
The genre-bent marketing, Thanks to A24’s always-gliding campaignsWant people to think that this movie is similar to the latest Aline Brosh McKenna feature. A “LEAKED” list of cinematic references for the function, which includes “age of innocence”, “reconciliation”, “phantom thread”, “Emma.” however Many … and it is intentionally.
“Materialists” are not Any of these films – not because of a lack of technology or highness or above and below the line talent, but rather for its tone. “Materialists” earn hints to “Devil Wears Prada” (the opening assembly), “You have mail” (that needle case), and yes, Jane Austen (as a Rom-Com not, to some extent?), But that’s more Leslye Headland’s “Bachelorette” than Robert Altman’s “The Player” (even on that list).
“Materialists” is not about love. It’s about profit. It’s about greed. It is about Lucy’s – and partly our own – inner monologue that nothing really means in this facade of society – and Hollywood. “Materialists” takes a razor blade to the film’s arm – and it is refreshing.
Just like “Past life” is not a romance, “materialists” is a comedy. And a very dark on it. While Lucy is too busy telling both its “Unicorn” perfect bachelor Harry (Pedro Pascal) and her struggling actor ex John (Chris Evans) that none of them really “want” her (comedy is that, They do!), one of her clients, Sophie (Zoë Winters), has his life destroyed by “romance” who went terrible wrong.
For Lucy, love is a game with numbers. For Sophie, it’s hell. The contrast and tone shift at the moment when the reveal of what has happened to Zoe is played will probably shock the audience – not because it is unrealistic, but because it is too real. Reality does not belong to Rom-Coms; Fairy tales do. Good “materialists” is not a ROM-COM.
There is nothing fun with Sophie’s abuse and subsequent, legitimate legal action against Lucy’s matchmaking company. However, there is humor in the fact that Lucy is surrounded by identical cheering women who are also in her sororite of peddling soulmates to the self -sufficient when she hears the news. Since Lucy’s boss (Marin Ireland) reminds her, dating is a risk. But the only risk that Lucy can understand before this moment is the economic type.
When Sophie (a completely brilliant winters) later spits that Lucy is a “hallic”, we cannot agree. Lucy is. We’re all. We are all complicated when it comes to taking advantage of pain and pleasure, especially in the Hollywood machine. It is a sad truth that we already know and try to avoid confronting; Song sings just a little higher for all of us to hear. “With this movie I try to do something different,” Song told indifire. “It’s fun to play the game and objective ourselves and each other. It’s cat. But the end of it will be dehumanization.”
Is it dehumanizing or funny when Harry (Pascal) bends six inches lower to show its real height before His leg reinforcement surgery? Is it shrink or fun when Lucy hears “no black, no fats” seriously from a client when they name their demands on a friend? Should we laugh when Lucy and John break in front of Times Square Applebees because he is too “bad”?
Song toys with broken hearts that are as interchangeable as being literally financially broken. The ongoing discussion about fees is part of Lucy’s skewed perspective, and “materialists” are told by her through her. Instead of dating only in the currency of sex, it is about protection, food and yes, material goods.
Opening the movie on Cavepeople (another laugh or WTF moment, depending on who you ask) reinforces that: people have always been shallow. Lucy and her customers are no different. It is easy to imagine “materialists” in a future where there are leaderboards with evaluations of stock markets for freer (again another real marketing technology from the studio). Or even today, when Box Office returns and lengths of standing ovations are still reported breathing every weekend.
“People are human beings are human beings,” Lucy tells her boss after complaining that all her customers act as a child. They are because she is, because we all are. Song has captured this circular cynicism with its subversive, pun-filled film. The only meaningful transaction here? To buy a ticket to see it.
An A24 edition, “Materialists” is now in theaters.
