After what seems like months I’ve finally got back to a cinema screening. Apart from my generally restricted lifestyle at the moment, there haven’t been many films I actually wanted to watch over the Summer and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see this film, but Celine Song’s début film Past Lives (US-Korea 2023) was an intriguing, if slightly flawed, film so I decided to take the risk. I was engaged by Materialists and I guess I actually enjoyed watching it but overall it felt more like an interesting project than a film of any substance. Partly I felt like a distanced observer since I rarely watch mainstream contemporary American films so I didn’t know the three main actors very well and I felt relatively clueless (and frankly not very interested) in the dating habits of the rich in Manhattan. I tended to watch the film doing mental comparisons with classic Hollywood screwball comedies (since many reviewers refer to it as a romantic comedy).
Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a professional matchmaker working for an international agency branded as ‘Adore’. She appears to be very successful and the inciting incident in the second section of the film occurs when Lucy attends the wedding of one of her clients who marries a wealthy investment banker. At the reception she catches the attention of the groom’s brother Harry (Pedro Pascal) but just as she begins chatting to him a waiter appears with her drinks order (beer and Coke?). The waiter turns out to be Lucy’s ex, John (Chris Evans), a still aspiring theatre actor in his late thirties earning a wage between acting jobs. Will Harry pursue Lucy? Will Lucy have any reason to think about returning to John? Here is the central narrative enigma in the three way relationship. I couldn’t prevent myself considering who the two male leads were reminding me of. I decided that Pedro Pascal reminded me, via his eyes and moustache, of Burt Reynolds and Chris Evans, partly because of his beard, made me think of Chris Dowd. I realised, however, that Reynolds and Dowd were/are both comic actors, whereas Pascal and Evans are not as far as I am aware. Dakota Johnson is also not known as comic star like Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard or Katherine Hepburn. Later, reading Adam Nayman’s review in Sight and Sound, Summer 2025, I noted that he chose to make a comparison with two films by James L. Brooks. One of these, Broadcast News (1987), has a similar triangular setting with Holly Hunter as a producer on a TV news show caught between Albert Brooks as a traditional journo and William Hurt as a newscaster who is being used by the TV company to attract viewers via his looks rather than the content of the news material. Broadcast News is listed by IMDb as a Comedy-Drama-Romance and that’s the description which fits Materialists better than ‘rom-com’.
Materialists looks very good and it is produced by some of the same team who gave us Past Lives such as Christine Vachon as producer, Shabier Kirchner as cinematographer and Keith Fraase as editor. It also has the relatively slow pace and the use of pauses and silence that worked well in the earlier film, but are possibly more problematic here. The film runs 116 minutes which is perhaps too long for this kind of film? It also opens and closes with a short sequence of ‘the first marriage proposal’ featuring early cave-dwelling humans. Some reviewers are annoyed by this but I thought it was OK. It sets up the traditional idea of a marriage as a form of business or at least as a practical survival transaction. The actual final credits sequence includes the real resolution of the narrative which may well have been missed by many audiences who leave their seats as soon as the first credit rolls. I stayed to the end of the credits and enjoyed a final terrific song ‘In Spite of Ourselves’ by John Prine and Iris Dement. The use of songs in the film is intriguing. With Cat Power, Harry Nilsson and the Ronettes and others among the oldies, I felt more included than I did by most of the other cultural references.
Overall I think the narrative isn’t strong enough for a Comedy-Drama-Romance. There is a sub-plot which starts to address the darker side of dating services but it feels under-explored and ‘tacked-on’ and also a nod to modern possibly dangerous trends in body-shaping. Both of these elements work as functional devices to help ‘move on’ the main narrative. The characters feel a little bland although all the performances are fine. I would have liked to know more about Lucy in particular. She doesn’t appear to have any friends other than Johnand specifically no ‘best girlfriend’. What about her parents or siblings? Having said all that, I will still seek out Celine Song’s next film. She clearly has talent and there are little personal touches that I like. The film has been reasonably successful with global box office of more than US $90 million for a production budgeted around US $20 million. But more analysis of the figures suggests that in the UK Past Lives was proportionately more successful as a ‘specialised film’. It will be interesting to see if Song continues to tack towards mainstream films or returns to more specialised films. The new film found its biggest market after North America in Russia and Australia rather than the UK.
Materialists is still playing in cinemas around the UK and I think it is definitely worth seeing. There is some intelligent discussion about the ‘economics’ and maths of dating and marriage. It could be sharper but perhaps that is an issue for a post-screening discussion?
itp Global Film 
I haven’t seen this but I very much enjoyed ‘Past Lives’. The rather generic romcom trailer was a turn-off and I think others feel the same way, as I note that the number of showings at Leeds Vue has very much declined after a week on release by comparison with a number of fairly indifferent films that have been out for longer. Pedro Pascal seems to be ubiquitous nowadays, and always very polished, but I saw him in ‘Eddington’ a couple of weeks back which I suspect, despite its flaws, is the better film.
Celine Song seems to be going the way of Chloe Zhao which is possibly a representation of the decline of the American independent film. One or two well-received independent films like ‘The Rider’ almost immediately sees them inducted into the studio system where the next project they are offered may be entirely unsuitable. Chloe Zhao’s downfall was, I think. ‘The Eternals’.
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I agree about Chloe Zhao and that was indeed what I had in mind when I wondered about the specialised/independent film v arthouse question.
Yes, Materialists did not wow the multiplex audience but it still made money. Now, a few weeks later it is still showing in independent cinemas where it might find a more receptive audience?
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