In an early scene in Materialists, Dakota Johnson’s Lucy, a talented matchmaker for the New York City elite who looks more expensive than her $80,000 salary, is sitting at the singles table at a wedding for clients she successfully set up when Pedro Pascal’s Harry slides in. He wants to know how she knew the happy couple were right for each other. Lucy explains that the bride and groom come from similarly moneyed backgrounds and big happy families, and they match on their level of attractiveness. That’s all it takes to be soul mates. It’s just math.
The follow-up to Celine Song’s Past Lives hit theaters earlier this month, and its reception has been highly mixed. The film, which has been billed as a rom-com, paints a fatalistic and calculating picture of the hetero-dating marketplace, presenting men and women as mere value propositions. As for Lucy, her parents — most traumatically! — argued about money, so she’s bent on breaking the cycle and marrying rich. But she soon finds herself torn between Harry, a charming and tasteful man working in private equity with a $12 million Tribeca penthouse, and her ex, John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor/cater waiter with roommates who drives an old Volvo and whom she dumped over finances. After Lucy and Harry begin a slow burn of a romance, she explains at an exceedingly expensive, low-lit restaurant why, as a couple, they just aren’t adding up: Given his assets, looks, and taste, he could easily find a more valuable product than her on the market. In response, Harry suggests that Lucy has value beyond her looks and income. You get the sense that this is meant to feel like genuine insight, but when you sketch such a crude picture of modern dating, turning around and challenging it can feel a bit too easy. Also, why so few laughs?
Critic Angelica Jade Bastién, who reviewed the movie, argued that “Materialists isn’t the revelatory, thinking woman’s rom-com that Song and A24’s marketing department have promised it is,” so I brought her and Vulture senior news editor Morgan Baila, a known Materialists enjoyer — we won't say lover — together to hash it out.
What did you think of Past Lives, and how did that shape your expectations going into Materialists?
Morgan Baila: That movie was very hyped. I was kind of surprised to see it on the New York Times’ “100 Best Movies” list, to be honest. There were certain scenes that were beautiful, but I don't think that sustained throughout the whole film. I like any movie that's set in New York, though, because it checks boxes of things that specifically entertain me.
Angelica Jade Bastién: With Past Lives, I was like, Okay, we need to ban filmmakers from watching Wong Kar-wai for a while, because I think they've learned the wrong lessons and don't understand that the moodiness built from the silences that those characters share are filled with meaning. Past Lives was very tepid. It's thinking about nostalgia and longing but has no real feeling. Celine Song understands the surface-level needs to evoke a certain idea, but she does not understand the way actual human beings relate to each other. There's pretty people looking pretty; I am feeling nothing. Modern directors seem to forget that key to making the movie work is them caring about the acting. It's very chic sterility, basically.
Why do you think Materialists has been so polarizing?
Morgan: I saw it at Nighthawk, and every grouping was guy-girl, all people on dates, and they give you the bill at the end, so the money aspect of dating was so up front in that experience. The parts that annoyed people — the cost of Pedro Pascal’s character’s apartment and the back-and-forth between Lucy and him about money and value — felt really hammered over, but I hadn't heard money discussed so crudely in a movie that looks so chic. This isn’t a rom-com about Chris Evans; it’s about how money can seem like it's going to ruin or fix something.
Angelica: One cause of the polarization is the marketing of the movie, both by A24 and Celine Song herself — to the point where I'm like, Are you trolling us, girl, or do you really believe that is the movie you made? There was a leaked list of movies that are touchstones for Materialists … I need these modern directors to understand: You cannot evoke the best filmmakers of all time when you're making a movie this mid.
Celine Song was saying that she cares about rom-coms. A romantic comedy is comedy, meaning there's jokes and punch lines and humor. Materialists is a very airy romantic drama without the stakes of a real drama. I blame the script and Celine Song's direction primarily, but the casting of Dakota Johnson, an actress who carries herself like she's never had a problem in the world — we're supposed to buy that she's this gritty woman about town who has struggled financially? That woman looks like she's never actually touched a dollar bill; she has other people who hold her money for her.
Morgan: I like that the film wasn’t what it seemed. I saw so many TikToks of young girls going to see this and then being like, "What the hell was that?" as if they’d just seen a horror movie. But nothing about Dakota Johnson’s character points to someone who drinks beer and Coke.
Angelica: I had questions about the history between Dakota Johnson's Lucy and Chris Evans's John. They're very vague about it beyond that one flashback and knowing that they broke up over money. You never get a sense of what their relationship was like when it worked. There's so many little details in this movie that pinpoint how empty and dishonest it is. When she’s on an early date with Pedro Pascal’s character and she's like, “I have a negative dowry. If you want to have kids, I'm already such-and-such age.” That's a make-or-break conversation! This feels so untethered to actual reality, which is weird because it's trying to be something that really talks about modern dating and all its admittedly terrible ills.
How plausible did Lucy’s dilemma over choosing John or Harry — two extremely divergent characters — actually seem?
Angelica: What actually was the dynamic between Harry and Lucy? You don't actually see how they function as a couple. You see him pay for things. It never really feels like a real conflict because there isn't enough detailing to round out the dynamics that they're actually having.
With John, l internally chuckled when Chris Evans said, "I'm a 37 year-old cater-waiter who has roommates,” or whatever that stupid line was. Celine Song isn’t looking honestly at the dynamics of money beyond ,“Wow, that really affects relationships.” But a guy at Harry’s level of wealth — he doesn't need no matchmaking service looking like that. Neither man felt like people that would even interest her because Song doesn't seem interested in who these people are as human beings. Can you give me just something to hold on to beyond, “He's rich and kind, and he's poor and kind”?
Morgan: I think I would have liked the movie more if it focused more on the actual matchmaking process. I loved the scenes of them all at this completely made-up office. I guess I don't mind mocking girlbosses. I wished it had focused more on the weirdness of modern dating, especially in these big cities where the disparities between couples is increasingly crazy.
My big confession here is I'm not a Pedro Pascal fan. I think he's really overexposed. And I am also not a Chris Evans fan. I wasn't surprised that Dakota Johnson didn't have good chemistry with either of them.
Angelica: In any romance when a person has to make a choice, you need to make both choices seem desirable to the point where you're like, “I'm not sure who I would choose.” She seems fine with either direction it goes in and kind of nonplussed about everything happening around her.
The sexual-assault plotline was something that this film tried to present as a moment where maybe Lucy's calculus about matchmaking gets upended. Her client Sophie accuses her of using her and treating her as worthless goods, but I think the movie ends up treating her the same. And the times that Lucy could actually change, she falls back on company jargon: "He checked a lot of our boxes."
Angelica: The script wants to be frothy, airy, very surface-level, but that plotline threw a fucking anchor into it. The Sophie character isn't really a person, and she's been low-key denigrated through the movie. “She has no specialty in the marketplace” — I think that was Lucy’s language. There's something galling about the decision to introduce a sexual assault into your story line just as a way to get Lucy to grow up or go with her heart.
Morgan: Lucy is presented as being so smart about dating, so it felt naïve for her to be like, “Oh my God, this happens?” It felt more on brand for her to not be so emotionally attached to this woman. And her sleeping over on Sophie’s couch was really weird.
Angelica: Why don't either of these women have friends? It's weird how historyless all these people are. Especially because it's supposed to be a grown-folks movie. When you're in your mid- to late 30s and you're dating, history is so important. For a movie that wants to care about the material reality that shapes your dating prospects, it seems really strange to be so loosey-goosey about what John and Lucy want for their future. This man is going to be broke for his entire life until he gives up the theater-actor thing. It's broke-man propaganda.
It felt dishonest about how hard it is for women who date men, especially in an era when women are far more educated and are doing far better than men in a lot of ways. Celine Song introduces ideas about capitalism and money, but when you take a step back, you realize she actually doesn't have anything to say about this subject matter. If there's no real emotional depth in a romantic drama that wants to be a rom-com, it's going to fall apart in your hands.
