Materialists, or the Economics of Romance
Celine Song’s Past Lives struck like thunder, a debut whose emotional majesty was sustained by a commitment to lived maturity. So her follow up feature was certain to come with high expectations. With such an introduction to Song’s filmic oeuvre, Materialists initially seems commonplace. But Song crafts a sturdy script out of convention, building something that is grander than the sum of its parts.
Lucy (Dakota Johnson) knows dating the way a cook knows a recipe, or the way a scientist knows a formula. Her job as a professional matchmaker has her hustling around New York City, pairing prospective partners based on their mutual desires, qualities, and income—this last one just as crucial as everything else, if not more so. This is simply the math of modern dating, a reality everyone’s bought into. Romance, like so much else these days, is just another algorithm. Income. Height. Weight. Number of shared hobbies. Frequency of travel. Size of family. Relational health of family. Statistics, perceptions, valuations.
Lucy has a strong sales pitch, and she’s got the formula down by heart, which makes her effective. Her talents have resulted in nine weddings and countless other successful relationships, which makes Lucy a near magical being in the modern city. And which means her services command top dollar. It’s at the latest wedding that she walks into a dating dilemma of her own. The wealthy brother of the groom, Harry (Pedro Pascal), turns down her services for the sake of a date with her. He’s out of her league, though he’d be right at home in her portfolio of clients, but despite her best efforts, Harry’s sincerity perseveres.
It’s also at that wedding where Lucy reconnects with John (Chris Evans), her ex, and the only long term relationship we’re aware of in Lucy’s life. He’s a struggling actor taking gigs as an event caterer, putting his life worlds apart from Harry’s lavish milieu. John’s melancholic longing is evident, but he doesn’t push things with Lucy.
So Lucy is left weighing the rich, endlessly charming Harry and the hopelessly broke John. All of this gives it a classic rom-com setup, but there are substantial diversions as the plot takes off from there. There will be no grand gesture, no shocking revelation (though there is one that, er, heightens the characters’ honesty). No one is left at an altar, nor does anyone make a foolish dash through an airport.
As with Past Lives, Song’s characters are more mature than we’d find in most films. They are aware of their conflicted emotions, and they can reveal their flaws. The dialogue cuts quickly past their guards, and the script is incisive in building the characters and forcing them to confront one another. Evans brings weight to the lines, indicating John’s weariness earned from years of striving—like in Knives Out, it’s a reminder of the strong work that Evans can pull off. Pascal, of course, is naturally charming, but he also defers that charm to Harry’s internal flaws. For a character that could be paper thin, Harry becomes far more interesting than his income could reveal.
Their craft each exceeds that of Dakota Johnson, who consistently lets the weight of Song’s script slip out of her grasp. Her line deliveries are too cold to come off as sweet yet not engaged enough to sell Lucy’s cynicism. Lucy is always selling, but Johnson is never quite convincing. It leaves Lucy floating out somewhere in the ether between Song’s grounded script and a more typical rom-com fantasy.
This staggers a story that otherwise has a lot worthy of reflection. Materialists is not trying to avoid being a romance, but it envelops that within a broad critique of modern dating. If Lucy is always selling, then she must be selling one of two things: either the notion of pitch perfect love, or the people themselves. As Lucy describes potential dates to her clients, the point is clear. Her clients are her products in that they are quantifiable and able to be priced: height, weight, hobbies, retirement account, attractiveness.
Materialists isn’t outright cynical, but its blade is honed. In fact, the title itself is an indictment—the film isn’t “The Materialists,” which would reduce its scope to the central characters. Rather, it’s simply Materialists because that’s what we’ve all become in modern dating. This is people as use value in the modern market. Relationship as the means to an end of furthering ourselves toward our personal ideals. Why should people need to be “competitive in the market?” What does this say about us—and about the market—that we have industrialized relationship?
Song is aware that the calculus of perceptions can’t quantify a person’s actual value. She’s aware that the system is exploitative, even while we have to keep living within it. Zoe Winters, playing Lucy’s client Sophie, gives a heavyweight punch of a performance that further pushes Materialists away from the rom-com milieu. Sophie’s arc crystallizes that Song’s chief concern is with reality. We know too much about the harshness of the world to imagine that romance is all fairytale.
There are moments of comedy and tension, and the film orbits romance, but Materialists excels as a consideration of lived concerns. Relationship is a risk—of an entirely different nature than the risk of investments or job applications or dropping out of college. It is irrevocably tied up in the economics of life, but it represents a risk that is far more existential. As such, it can’t be formulated and fed into an algorithm. Materialists draws our focus past such simple quantifications toward the fabric of our humanity.
