[Editor’s note: The following article contains spoilers for Celine Song‘s “Materialists,” which is now in theaters.]
“Materialists” has all the products: An Oscar-nominated auteur, a rom-com heartthrob, a “Fifty Shades of Gray” alum who occurs to be Hollywood royalty, a viral babygirl of the web who led a online game adaptation, and never one, however two MCU superheroes (properly, three, if you happen to don’t rely the Fox cut up).
This, as Dakota Johnson‘s matchmaker Lucy would say, checks all of the containers of being a excessive idea hit. And but, author/director Celine Music subverts all of it — and that’s the purpose.
Music’s sophomore function “Materialists” isn’t a takedown of the rom-com style (though IndieWire’s Kate Erbland makes an important case that it’s). Quite, it’s a hollowing out of the notion that the entire attributes and the entire statistics behind promoting your self on the relationship market and promoting a movie to theatergoers, will result in happiness, love, or audiences spending extra on the field workplace.
Lucy (who will assuredly go down as certainly one of Johnson’s most iconic characters) tells us this herself onscreen: Being a matchmaker to the elite is like being one thing as sensible as a mortician or as pragmatic as being an insurance coverage claims adjuster. Being a filmmaker inside fashionable Hollywood, particularly at massive studios the place “artwork is made by committee,” as Johnson herself has usually mentioned, isn’t any totally different.
Non-independent movies are made inside an algorithm calculated to enchantment to broad audiences; Lucy declares that if there isn’t a broad enchantment for an individual, then they must work in a “area of interest market.” The identical could be mentioned for films at present. Music, particularly after her beloved function directorial debut “Previous Lives” thrust her into the pageant circuit and awards machine, is aware of this. And Music is subverting this tough reality by the use of wrapping the bow of the “shiny bundle” of the rom-com style tight round viewers throats.
The genre-bent advertising and marketing, due to A24’s always-brilliant campaigns, needs folks to suppose this movie is akin to the most recent Aline Brosh McKenna function. A “leaked” checklist of cinematic references for the function, which incorporates “Age of Innocence,” “Atonement,” “Phantom Thread,” “Emma.,” “Delight & Prejudice,” “Jerry Maguire,” and “Phrases of Endearment,” reads like a Letterboxd prime nevertheless many… and that’s on objective.
“Materialists” is not any of these movies — not for lack of approach or loftiness or above and under the road expertise, however quite for its tone. “Materialists” serves allusions to “Satan Wears Prada” (that opening montage), “You’ve Bought Mail” (that needle drop), and sure, Jane Austen (which rom-com doesn’t, to some extent?), however it’s extra Leslye Headland’s “Bachelorette” than Robert Altman’s “The Participant” (additionally on that checklist).
“Materialists” isn’t about love. It’s about revenue. It’s about greed. It’s about Lucy’s — and partly, our personal — inside monologue that nothing actually issues on this facade of society — and Hollywood. “Materialists” takes a razor blade to the arm of cinema — and it’s invigorating.
Simply as “Previous Lives” isn’t a romance, “Materialists” is a comedy. And a really darkish one at that. Whereas Lucy is just too busy telling each her “unicorn” excellent bachelor Harry (Pedro Pascal) and her struggling-actor ex John (Chris Evans) that neither of them truly actually “need” her (the comedy is that, they do!), certainly one of her shoppers, Sophie (Zoë Winters), has her life devastated by “romance” gone horribly improper.
For Lucy, love is a sport of numbers. For Sophie, it’s hell. The distinction, and tonal shift within the second through which the reveal of what has occurred to Zoe is performed, will most likely shock audiences — not as a result of it’s unrealistic, however as a result of it’s too actual. Actuality doesn’t belong in rom-coms; fairytales do. Good factor “Materialists” isn’t a rom-com.
There’s nothing humorous about Sophie’s assault and subsequent, rightful authorized motion in opposition to Lucy’s matchmaking firm. There’s humor, nevertheless, in Lucy being surrounded by an identical cheering girls who’re additionally in her sorority of peddling soulmates to the soulless as she is advised the information. As Lucy’s boss (Marin Eire) reminds her, relationship is a danger. But the one danger Lucy can fathom earlier than this second is the monetary sort.
When Sophie (a fully good Winters) later spits that Lucy is a “pimp,” we are able to’t disagree. Lucy is. All of us are. We’re all complicit within the profiting off of ache and pleasure, particularly within the Hollywood machine. It’s a tragic reality we already know and attempt to keep away from confronting; Music is simply singing it slightly louder for us all to listen to. “With this film, I’m making an attempt to do one thing totally different,” Music advised IndieWire. “It’s enjoyable to play the sport and objectify ourselves and one another. It’s catty. However the finish of that’s going to be dehumanization.”
Is it dehumanizing or hilarious when Harry (Pascal) bends six inches decrease to indicate his true peak earlier than his leg augmentation surgical procedure? Is it cringe or humorous when Lucy is advised “no Black, no fatties” in all seriousness from a consumer as they title their calls for for a mate? Are we purported to be laughing when Lucy and John break up in entrance of the Instances Sq. Applebees as a result of he’s too “poor”?
Music toys with damaged hearts being as interchangeable as being actually financially broke. The continuing dialogue of dowries is a part of Lucy’s skewed perspective, and “Materialists” is advised by her, by way of her. As an alternative of relationship dealing solely within the foreign money of intercourse, it’s about shelter, meals, and sure, materials items.
Opening the movie on cavepeople (one other chuckle or WTF second, relying on who you ask) reinforces that: People have all the time been shallow. Lucy and her shoppers aren’t any totally different. It’s simple to think about “Materialists” set in a future the place there are leaderboards with inventory market asset evaluations for suitors (once more, one other actual advertising and marketing approach by the studio). And even at present, when field workplace returns and lengths of standing ovations are nonetheless breathlessly reported each weekend.
“Individuals are persons are persons are folks,” Lucy says to her boss after complaining that each one of her shoppers are performing like youngsters. They’re as a result of she is, as a result of all of us are. Music has captured this round cynicism together with her subversive, pun-filled movie. The one significant transaction right here? Shopping for a ticket to go see it.
An A24 launch, “Materialists” is now in theaters.