‘Materialists' Review: When Dakota Met Pedro (and Chris)

New York Times

2 days ago

Is heterosexual romance doomed, is the romantic comedy? Those questions swirl with light, teasing provocation in Celine Song's 'Materialists,' a seductive, smartly refreshed addition to an impossibly, perhaps irredeemably old-fashioned genre that was once a Hollywood staple. Set in the New York of today, it stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a professional matchmaker who's all business until her personal life takes a surprising turn — if more to her than to you — when she's swept into a romance with two different men. One is a broke dreamboat (Chris Evans as John), the other is more of a superyacht (Pedro Pascal as Harry).
Theirs is a sexy, sleek triangle, one that starts taking flight during a wedding after-party where Harry and Lucy have been chatting at the singles' table. A matchmaker, she introduced the bride and the groom, and now is eyeing up Harry as a prospective client, a so-called unicorn (wealthy, full head of hair, tall). Harry, who's the groom's brother, is more interested in her. With sly smiles, they playfully wink and coo, lunge and parry. Just as their flirting begins heating up, John — a waiter and, ta-da, her ex — loudly plunks down bottles of Lucy's favorite drink order: a Coke and a beer. The lines of attack have been established, and it's on.
Romantic comedies are often described as battles of the sexes, a metaphor that suggests that love affairs are effectively wars. Feelings get badly bruised in 'Materialists,' and there's a sobering shock of violence that's unusual in screen comedies or romances. But for Lucy and her clients, dating isn't about winners and losers; it's transactional, a market for buyers and sellers, and a matter of exchange value. Lucy's clients yearn, have familiar swoony hopes and dreams, but they're also consumers with shopping lists that include a prospect's height, weight, hair (or lack thereof) and age. 'She's 40 and fat,' one disgruntled male client tells Lucy early on about a match. 'I would never swipe right on a woman like that.'
Blunt and effective, that line is as realistic as it is gasp-out-loud ugly. It also an example of how Song can distill an entire ethos into a single, bracingly unsentimental line. (This is her second feature; her first was the wistful 'Past Lives.') What makes the moment land, though, is how Song uses the contempt in the guy's voice — it stops Lucy in her tracks — to signal that Song isn't interested in making just another dopey romance. He sounds insulted, angry, and not just at Lucy or his date (Zoë Winters as Sophie). It makes you wonder what he thinks about women, which introduces a shiver of menace that lingers even after Song shifts tones and focus to settle on Lucy's budding romance with Harry and her feelings for John.
That affair and those feelings are warm, true (or true enough) and, at times, delightful; there are, romance fans know, few movie pleasures as agreeable as watching good-looking, talented actors playact love. It's especially nice to see Johnson in a lead role that makes the most of her gifts. A consistently surprising actress, she is a supremely, sometimes fascinatingly languorous screen presence, one suggestive of Malibu beaches and excellent weed. She's been in the spotlight since childhood (her parents are Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson) and seems invitingly comfortable in her own skin, without a trace of that detached quality that can encase some beautiful, famous people like a protective membrane. If anything, Johnson seems lightly amused to be the center of attraction, and entirely aware of why she is.
It's instructive then that the first image of Lucy is a reflection of her face in a mirror. She's doing her makeup and getting ready for work, and looks attentive yet unreadable. Lucy is soon on the move, her ponytail swinging, easing through New York with a purposefulness that dovetails with Song's filmmaking. In crisp, breezy scenes, with lilting music and some great sound work, Song introduces the matchmaking company where Lucy is a star employee, her killer, off-kilter sales pitch — 'you're looking for a nursing-home partner and a grave buddy' — and the outwardly independent women who flock to her, women who are edging toward 40 (or older) and are as much in Song's sightlines as Lucy and her romantic foils are.
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