One of the things that people ask me – except what it is like to be so wonderful – is what movie criticism is actually good for. I have a lot of answers. I mean, I would be better because this is what I do for a living, but I mean it. Film criticism serves many features. It increases awareness of films that can otherwise be lost to history or be lost in the river by new editions. It highlights different perspectives on the same artwork, which allows readers to explore large and varied interpretations of every cinematic rorschach test. But one of my favorites, and an important functional criticism will (and should) always serve, is that it is obliged to prepare readers for what a movie actually is, not what it is marketed as.
Sometimes this means saying our readers that a movie, which the advertising would very much like you think is good, is not so good. That is not the case with Celine song“Materialists.” It is exceptionally intelligent and biting filmmaking. But sometimes it also means telling that trailers, which are designed to convince you to buy a ticket will hell or high water, will not prepare you for the right experience. If you go into “materialists” and expect a glossy romantic comedy – like The trailer for “materialists” means strongCutesy “Material Girl” protection and everything – you can get deeply disappointed. If you go in and expect a pointed exploration of the commodification of modern romance, you can be deeply impressed.
“Materialists” have many Rom-com rhythms, so you can forgive to believe that it will be a good love triangle date from the beginning. Dakota Johnson plays like Lucy, a professional matchmaker in New York City, who joins its customers with partners based on absurd specific and often unrealistic criteria. To Lucy, who has been directly responsible for nine marriages in recent years, is love mathematics. A person’s romantic value is based on quantifiable factors, such as age, height, income, body mass index and political beliefs. A rich man is a catch. A rich man who is over six meters long is a unicorn.
At her client’s wedding, she hits Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, who is completely a unicorn. In the industry we call this “good casting.” She wants to turn Harry into Sellable goods and transfer him to her customers, but Harry is only interested in Lucy, and she cannot resist his lavish lifestyle. She is about to have sex with Pedro Pascal but she continues to be distracted by his stylish apartment. It should tell you everything you need to know about her priorities.
Lucy’s ex-boyfriend, John, is not a unicorn. He is played by Chris Evans. I’m not sure this qualifies as good casting. Half expect, when John talks about how little he has to offer as an emotionally accessible, hard -working artist, that Helen Mirren’s voice will let in from the “Barbie” sound and say “Note to the filmmakers: Chris Evans is the wrong person to throw if you want to make this point.”
Anyway, John is poor. He is a very good person but he is a very poor investment, and Lucy is sufficiently self -conscious to know that regardless of emotions she has for John, she has more feelings for Multimillion Dollar Faked apartments. And as she eventually discovers, when something goes terribly wrong at work, she can actually be a bad person. Or at least one person whose values have been incredibly lost.
“Materialists” take a trip for the serious in the second half but it does not come from nowhere. The first half refuses to be light and fluffy. Even scenes that would normally play the romantic imagination, for example, to be wooed by Pedro Pascal are highly lit, and directed as the actors do their treasures. Celine Song, whose “past life” was a powerful director’s debut and rich with personal sensitivity, does not make a mistake here. She calls her shots. She makes a movie about the people who sell the imagination about love. She is not herself, who sells that imagination. At least not in the movie “Materialists”. Song wisely avoids any such hypocrisy, and in her second function strengthens herself as one of the most interesting and thought -provoking new filmmakers in the 2020s.
“Materialists” find their way back to love, eventually, to some extent, but through self -analysis and self -incrimination. It is not a heartwarming story of true love to find a way. It is an intellectual story of love, true or otherwise, which proves that it is a bit more complicated than a checklist. Or maybe much less complicated. I guess it depends on whether you are more of a Lucy or more of a John.
I am not sure that “materialists” qualify as a “date movie” of any conventional definition, unless you and your date love artificial film and do not mind having a complex, not-very-sexy conversation afterwards. But I warmly recommend that you see “materialists”, and that you see it for what it is, not what it looks like from the outside, as you have made of the type of romance-modification seller that Celine Song’s film criticizes. It is a fantastic movie about romance – whether it is technically “romantic” or not.
An A24 edition, “materialists” opens exclusively in theaters on June 13.
