There’s a straightforward pitch to Celine Track’s newest movie Materialists: think about a recent New York screwball romance, half Working Woman hustle, half When Harry Met Sally walk-and-talk. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is our entry level, a high-end matchmaker at an elite agency referred to as Adore, tasked with brokering relationships like a dealer flips condos. And if Lucy is a matchmaker, she’s additionally, as certainly one of her shoppers bitterly factors out, a sort of pimp—brokering intimacy, typically on the expense of her shoppers’ security.
The setup suggests a pointy, humorous critique of how romance and capitalism have fused in trendy metropolis life. However as I watched, I couldn’t shake the sense that Track was circling one thing compelling with out fairly seizing it. The movie desires to be witty, biting, heartfelt, and bruising unexpectedly—and in making an attempt to juggle these tones, it not often lands cleanly.
A Voluntary Celibate Meets Her Match
Track, who made her characteristic debut with the transcendent Previous Liveshas moved right here from wistful metaphysics to materials considerations. The place her first movie lingered in silence and craving, Materialists leans on declarations, list-making, and sharp dialogue.
Lucy’s job at Adore gives the movie’s scaffolding. She curates rich shoppers’ romantic futures like one may organize résumés, pairing males with “appropriate” girls whose attributes look good on paper. The enterprise thrives on a New York that prizes ambition, appearances, and connections—till cracks seem. Sophie (Zoe Winters), Lucy’s longtime consumer, grows disillusioned with the fixed turnover of dates and, extra gravely, turns into entangled with a person who poses actual hazard. This subplot unfolds like a reminder of the hazards baked into commodified intimacy: trauma diminished to authorized disputes and NDAs.
Outdoors the workplace, Lucy’s private life proves simply as difficult. She’s nonetheless tethered to John (Chris Evans), a former flame with little greater than charisma and a stack of unpaid payments, whilst Harry (Pedro Pascal), a non-public fairness millionaire nursing his personal insecurities, represents the snug various. Their push-and-pull offers the movie its romantic triangle, although Track appears much less considering suspense than in laying naked what every choice represents: survival, stability, or the faint risk of affection.
‘Materialists’: A Nearer Look into Relationship within the Digital Age
There’s rather a lot right here price admiring. Track understands the fatigue of relationship within the digital age, even when her stand-in is a boutique firm quite than Tinder. Adore, the agency the place Lucy works, is all shiny profiles and empty guarantees. Its shoppers deal with intimacy like a set of bullet factors—requirements to be met, containers to be checked. As famous above, that subplot involving Sophie serves because the movie’s rawest thread, and it captures the hazard of outsourcing need to an trade. A lawsuit turns Sophie’s trauma into simply one other customer support challenge. It’s the uncommon second the place Materialists cuts deep.
The movie can be stunning to have a look at. Shabier Kirchnerreturning as Track’s cinematographer, frames New York not as a postcard however as a battlefield—sharp angles, muted nighttime colours, mushy gradings that make town glow and ache directly. The nighttime sequences, notably when Lucy and John roam aimlessly, are richer than something in Previous Lives. Daniel Pemberton’s rating, too, deserves point out: his gentler themes swell throughout Lucy and John’s quieter moments, teasing the potential of one thing real in a world of sheer fakery.
Nevertheless, regardless of the evident craftsmanship, I struggled with the movie’s message. Track’s present in Previous Lives was her skill to depart issues unsaid, to belief in glances and silence. Who can neglect Nora holding again tears as Hae Sung walks away, her ache wordless however devastating? In Materialistsall the things is spoken out loud. Characters declaim their emotions in prose so pointed it veers into the cringeworthy. Declarations of affection and longing don’t land with ache a lot as with toe-curling awkwardness. Followers of typical romance could relish the candor, however for me it felt over-explained, as if Track had misplaced religion within the viewers’s capability for instinct.
What Occurs When the Screenplay Vacillates in Tone
The performances mirror the unevenness. Johnson offers Lucy a steely composure that often cracks into vulnerability; Evans, taking part in towards his regular leading-man sheen, finds humor and humility in John, and it is likely to be certainly one of his loosest, most charming turns. However Pascal is left stranded. Harry needs to be greater than only a system—a person whose wealth, insecurities, and physique modifications might have stated one thing fascinating about how far we’ll go to be fascinating. As a substitute, he’s written like a checkbox himself: the apparent “different man” in a triangle the place the selection isn’t doubtful. Calling this underuse “felony” isn’t overstating it.
Then there’s the ending. With out giving an excessive amount of away, Track clearly desires to ship her characters out with a measure of happiness. Lucy, Sophie, John, even Harry—all of them land someplace mushy. It’s a noble impulse, but in addition one which undercuts the ruthlessness the movie spent a lot time diagnosing. If love is so wrapped up in cash, standing, and survival, is it sufficient to kiss in Central Park and promise to make “dangerous monetary selections collectively”? The title is Materialistsin spite of everything. To counsel that the characters can so simply shrug off their very own values appears like an evasion. At 117 minutes, it performs like a protracted buildup to a straightforward exit.
What makes the movie fascinating, although, is exactly this pressure: its need to be each cynical and tender, savage and romantic. I agree that in some ways it’s an “anti-capitalist rom-com,” a sort of Jane Austen rewrite for the Uber technology. Others may dismiss it as Nora Ephron or Mike Nichols minus the wit. I fall someplace in between. There are moments the place Track skewers the absurdity of contemporary relationship tradition—like a marriage the place Lucy convinces a crying bride to undergo with it, though she is aware of it’s a sham—that really feel alive, pressing, and unsparing. However there are additionally stretches the place the movie appears uncertain, hedging between satire and sincerity, and never absolutely committing to both.
A Good Romantic Movie that Trades Craving for Pragmatism
Maybe the fairest approach to see Materialists is as a transitional work. Track isn’t repeating herself, which is admirable; she’s as a substitute merely making an attempt to map the economics of intimacy in a means few filmmakers have dared. However she hasn’t but discovered find out how to stability her sharp observations with a story that sustains them. I stored wishing for much less dialogue, extra space. For characters who didn’t simply discuss their values however lived them, even messily. For an ending that didn’t tie bows however left scars.
Nonetheless, I can’t dismiss it. Too many photos keep in my head—the mushy glow of a nighttime backyard post-wedding, the best way Sophie’s voice shakes as she calls Lucy in concern, the nervous smile on John’s face as he provides a makeshift proposal. For all its flaws, Materialists will get at one thing true: that in a metropolis constructed on ambition, even love begins to really feel like a transaction. And possibly the rationale the movie frustrates as a lot because it intrigues is as a result of Track remains to be determining find out how to movie that paradox.
A self-described cinephile who can’t cease speaking—and writing—about movies. Paul additionally moonlights as ghostwriter and editor for just a few memoirs. He at present resides within the Philippines.