The chemistry of a screen love triangle is always a tricky affair. And the more self-aware a romance is, the trickier it can be. "Materialists" is a very self-conscious modern day love story that deals in a lot of very old romance tropes. It depends entirely on buying that our heroine, Lucy (Dakota Johnson), has more chemistry with one man, John (Chris Evans), instead of another, Harry (Pedro Pascal). Director Celine Song tries her hardest, but by the end of the movie I still wasn't convinced. I enjoyed the movie for other reasons, but it's a shame that the central conceit never quite worked.
Lucy is a matchmaker based in New York City, who works for an upscale agency called Adore. Her clients pay thousands for her to arrange dates with potential matches, and Lucy is very good at her job. Easily the best parts of the movie are the scenes of her offering counseling and insights into modern relationships for her clients. It's refreshing to hear her talk so bluntly about the transactional nature of many couplings, and all the traits people judge their worth by - age, wealth, height, weight, job, education, and attractiveness. Lucy herself is happy to stay single, until she meets a "unicorn," a wealthy man named Harry who is exactly what she's always wanted. However, a complicating factor is that she still has feelings for her ex, John, a struggling actor who she only parted ways with because he's perpetually broke.
It's a given who Lucy is going to end up with, but getting there is the fun part. I really enjoyed Dakota Johnson's performance, playing Lucy as this coolly self-assured, but incredibly jaded woman who peddles the notion that all good matches are just a matter of putting all the right variables together. Johnson always had a slightly unapproachable screen persona, and that works for the character, who hides her insecurities under a facade of the all-knowing matchmaker who has all the answers and says all the quiet parts out loud. "Materialists" is really a character study of Lucy, and what happens when her preconceptions are challenged. Equally important as her relationships to John and Harry is Lucy's relationship with her client Sophie (Zoë Winters), an average woman with realistic expectations, who Lucy is having trouble finding matches for. The matchmaking math isn't working as expected, and Lucy has to face that there are some serious flaws in the way she views love and romance.
The filmmaking is wonderful, and "Materialists" is such a pleasure to watch. Sure, there's plenty of lifestyle eye candy, but the visual storytelling all around is superb. I love the way that Lucy looks subtly different in her scenes with her two love interests, the way that she's lit and the way that she's framed. You immediately understand that Lucy belongs with John because she's more open and comfortable in his world than the more affluent one she's worked so hard to access. I wasn't a big fan of "Past Lives" because I felt the story was awfully slight, but it's great to find that Celine Song's style translates to something more broad and commercial.
Alas, the only place where I think she went wrong was casting Chris Evans. I like Chris Evans as an actor, but he and Dakota Johnson don't pair nearly as well as Pedro Pascal and Dakota Johnson. Switching their roles might have been interesting, but what I think it comes down to is that Evans doesn't have the energy of a blue collar, average everyman. There's too much Captain America in him for that, so the interactions with Johnson always ring a little false. On the flip side, Pedro Pascal as a fantasy of the ideal husband, who turns out to be maintaining his own facade, is spot on. I don't care that Pascal is in everything this year because he keeps nailing it.
And despite the flaws, I happily recommend "Materialists." It has been too long since we've had a high profile, unapologetically romantic film with ambitions this big and from talents this bright.
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