R.I.P. Dante Alighieri, you would've loved Celine Song's Materialists. Much like Dante's Inferno, Materialists is about Heaven and Hell. In this case, Heaven is personified by the allure of love. No matter how cynical we are, yearning always wins out. The urge to be close to someone, to feel their hands running through your hair, to nuzzle your chin on a lover’s shoulders, forces us to do crazy things like re-download toxic dating apps for the umpteenth time. Just the 1% possibility of clutching hands with another soul compels people to give dating another try.
Speaking of those technological marvels, Hell in Materialists is the miserable state of 2020s dating. Algorithms, societal pressures, late-stage capitalism, and so much more have turned this realm into a cesspool. Beneath the bouquets of flowers and touching notes are cynical and even downright dehumanizing reasons for falling in love. Then there’s all the dudes constantly calling women “fat” and “pigs.” Want to glimpse a version of Hell that would’ve made Dante Alighieri scurry back to Florence? Just comb through your Tindr inbox after presenting as a woman on dating app for a few days.
New York City matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is all about selling people the idea that Heaven is just around the corner. Her company, Adore, is all about getting people their dream partner, right down to their height, favorite TV show, or age. For Lucy, "love" is all about doing the math. People with similar economic, political, and familial backgrounds will get together and make perfect couples. It’s just numbers. While selling this concept at the wedding of one of her clients, Lucy runs into the extraordinarily rich Harry Castillo (Pedro Pascal). Immediately, he begins flirting with this cynical soul who’s determined to never settle down.
Lucy's ex-boyfriend and struggling actor, John (Chris Evans), is actually catering this event. One look at Lucy and the spark in his heart flares up again. Within the walls of this wedding, a love triangle forms as Lucy finds herself torn between a new wealthy lover and a still-infatuated figure from yesteryear. Writer/director Celine Song, though, doesn’t play this material out like a standard Robert Luketic feature from 2005. Instead, this is an aching motion picture that eventually touches on the darkest corners of the dating scene with Lucy's client Sophie (Zoë Winters).
Between Past Lives and Materialists, I hope Celine Song makes 80 more bittersweet movies about the heart-shatteringly real complexities of romance in New York City. Two features into her career, Song’s already established stirking visual motifs like the way she films strings of lightbulbs dangling across the background of nighttime upstate New York exteriors. Previously, that visual element materialized in a mesmerizing Past Lives scene showing Nora Moon (Greta Lee) and Arthur Zaturansky (John Magaro) talking about In-Yun. Here in Materialists, those lights appear once again in one of the film’s final scenes.
Something about Song contrasting tiny yet brightly lit man-made creations with the pitch blackness of night so vividly evokes how paradoxical real relationships and human connections are. In those lights, one can see how quiet, tender bonds between people fight back against the overwhelming grimness of existence. Plus, those shots just look so pretty and rich with wistful emotion. In both Lives and Materialists, something as simple as dangling lights made me so misty-eyed.
Song and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner continue to have dynamite visual instincts in this sequence and the rest of Materialists. A late moment where Lucy processes a harrowing development in the foreground while her co-workers pop champagne and celebrate in the background (an evocative depiction of “heaven” and “hell” existing inches from each other) is one of many terrifically detailed images the duo concoct.
Such precisely composed tableaus benefit tremendously from the use of 35mm film. New York looks so appropriately lived-in thanks to that detail. Even with such consistently outstanding imagery, I do sympathize (though far from agree) with viewers who’ve walked away from Materialists claiming it’s “boring.” There’s a lot of dialogue here revolving around Lucy laying bare the mathematical underpinnings of relationships. Certainly, the heavier emphasis on such clinical verbiage ensures Materialists can never come close to the exceedingly visual-centric mastery of Past Lives.
Honestly, though, I had no problem with those bursts of analytical dialogue, especially since they’re so firmly rooted in who Lucy is as a character. The bittersweetness of Materialists, and especially its depiction of romantic connections always being so close yet so far, very quickly won over my heart. It helps that subtle filmmaking details absorb viewers into these fictional worlds. An early scene of Lucy talking with a nervous bride-to-be, for instance, eschews Daniel Pemberton’s romantic score until just the right moment. The silence on the soundtrack accentuates the raw emotions Lucy and this woman share.
Meanwhile, the empathetic gaze and nuanced writing afforded to Harry and John make them a love triangle easy to invest in. Neither one immediately registers as this feature’s equivalent to James Marsden in The Notebook or Jason Clarke in countless late 2010s features. They’re both intricate characters you end up cheering on for different reasons. Most importantly, though, the handling of incredibly serious material related to Sophie in the third act shattered my heart. Both Song’s screenwriting and Winters’ performance leave you breathless in depicting this woman’s painful, messy rage at Lucy. This vivid portrayal of turmoil is downright haunting.
If there is a major Materialists shortcoming, it’s unfortunately in Dakota Johnson’s lead performance. In the last few days, I’ve had an epiphany and realized that Johnson is our generation’s equivalent to Dennis Hopper. Both are talented actors often taken for granted, but they also exclusively work in very specific confines. Hopper's famously manic, obtuse energy is perfect for projects like Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, or The American Friend. However, that same aura can distract and undercut in the wrong creative domain.
Similarly, Johnson has this clinical, ever so slightly aloof quality that’s perfect for dreamlike movies such as the Suspiria remake or The Lost Daughter’s psychologically volatile landscape. Like Hopper, Johnson could’ve crushed a David Lynch character. However, whenever she inhabits more standard, naturalistic projects like Daddio, her vibes are all wrong. That problem hinders Lucy in Materialists. Johnson excels playing “If Google Was a Guy” but for matchmaking, as Lucy immediately has an answer to every question or an equation for every relationship. However, later material revolving around Lucy’s torment just isn’t in her wheelhouse.
Speaking of third-act woes, Song’s script gets wobbly bouncing back and forth between Sophie’s plight and Lucy’s love triangle problems. Intentional dissonance across these story elements is baked right into the screenplay. Materialists urges viewers to consider how strange it is to continue on with “normal” existence when tragedy simultaneously exists in our peripheral vision. However, moments involving Harry and Josh exhibiting peak vulnerability can’t help but pale in comparison to what Sophie’s going through.
Bearded, lovesick Chris Evans is a cutie pie, but whenever she wasn’t on-screen, I did find myself asking “where’s Sophie?” Materialists could’ve really gone the extra mile as a movie if it had followed its subversive instincts all the way up until its ending. Instead, juggling standard romantic-drama material with darker, disruptive impulses proves only sporadically successful.
Even as both Song and Johnson’s respective reaches exceed their grasps in Materialists, this is yet another deeply moving exercise from the Past Lives auteur. The imagery’s sumptuous, it’s got an excellent score (never underestimate Daniel Pemberton, that composer always delivers), and I was left verklempt on several occasions. Those are all terrific attributes for a romantic drama to flaunt, especially one like Materialists that so thoughtfully explores how modern dating is an unholy fusion of Heaven and Hell. Dante Alighieri would be proud.