A thought that struck me a lot all throughout Celine Song’s Materialists was that it’s been a *while* since I’ve seen a proper New York Movie. It’s the great cinematic city, but the only other films to use it this year have been in a more generic any-city format to serve as backdrop for superhero action, so it really feels like a treat to get a proper, old-school romcom (the genre New York was truly made for) in the Big Apple. Even if the end result is a bit too underpowered to match up to the best of its genre/setting stablemates (or even Song’s previous film, the much-loved Past Lives), Materialists really does work as a romantic postcard for a city that, thanks to its expense as a shooting location, we’re sadly seeing less and less of on the big screen.
This conflict between artistic romance and financial reality is a perfect meta touchstone for Materialists itself, a romcom drilling down into the unfortunate but omnipresent reality of just how intertwined love and money are. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a matchmaker (an instant hall-of-fame entry into the Silly New York Romcom Job canon) for rich clients looking for very specific versions of love; women want their men rich and tall; men want their women young and thin; almost all are monstrous cynics.
It’s a job that has caused Lucy to turn her back on romance, a process sped along by a previous breakup with a boyfriend she truly loved – this is John (Chris Evans), a 37-year-old actor/waiter who still lives with roommates – thanks to their constant bickering over money. John suddenly reappears in Lucy’s life at just the wrong time, catering at a wedding that Lucy’s matchmaking was the origin of and at which she has just met the brother of the groom (and unbelievable catch) Harry (Pedro Pascal).
Harry is exceedingly rich, with class and charm to spare, and thus begins a classic love triangle of whether true love can triumph over financial stability and convenience. Refreshingly, Song doesn’t go for the easy love-over-all message – as any adult living with roommates in a city they can’t really afford will tell you, money actually can make you happy, or at least the lack of it will make you miserable. It’s just one of a lot of clever touches in a very witty and layered script, continuing Song’s pattern of emotional subtlety and lack of judgement from Past Lives.
The problem is, though, that Materialists is actually too subtle, and lacks the eventual emotional tidal wave that allowed Past Lives to earn its quietude. Big, blowout moments are handled with too much dignity and grace, the jokes earn chuckles but not laughs, the dating itself is very chaste, and the lead trio of performances all lack impact. Evans is definitely the best of the bunch, and you do sometimes actually feel his heart pour off the screen, but Johnson and Pascal are just too reserved, their poise and calm often reading as just blandness. Yes, Materialists is a film about the limits reality can place on love, but this doesn’t feel as much like passion constrained as it does passion non-existent.
The dialogue still keeps things alive though; Song has an incredible knack for telling little details, especially when a character answers the question they want to have been asked, instead of the one actually posed, the sort of instantly relatable defence mechanism one deploys constantly, whether in love or just a boring office job. It also all looks very nice, shallow focus and golden evenings bringing New York and its surrounding countryside to lovely, shiny life. Reserved as it is, Materialists can’t touch the Nora Ephron classics that its marketing has been trying so hard to emulate, but a grown-up big city romance with this much to say is still something precious in the modern movie market, even if your main takeaway may well be ‘I should watch When Harry Met Sally again’.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 