'Materialists' is broke boy propaganda
Celine Song's new A24 romance has its problems—but don't we all?
Listen. Liiisten. I didn’t want to write about this movie. America’s ass led me into temptation.
It made me see “Materialists,” despite a flight-or-fight response to the trailer. It’s not that Celine Song’s A24 sorta-rom-com had nothing going for it but(t) Chris Evans. For example, he and co-stars Pedro Pascal, Dakota Johnson, and Dakota Johnson’s Bangs just went on a generational press tour. It’s important to disclose my conflicts of interest as a critic, that’s all.
Last night, my friend Kelsey and I caught the movie in a packed theater. Like a miniature focus group, we were divided on which guy the girl should go with. Evans, the second hottest movie star from Boston, got me in the door, so I danced with him who brung me.
To my surprise, the film left me vibrating. Giddy, for all its flaws (its many, many, wow-that’s-a-lot flaws). See, I didn’t expect “Materialists” to stan so hard for broke boys. We exist. We are desirable. It’s time to fetishize us and our limited savings.
“Materialists” follows Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker for New York’s rich, lonely, and picky. She just had her ninth client make it from the first date to the altar, a career landmark celebrated by her co-workers like Don Draper landing a tobacco account.
At the wedding, she scopes out a potential mark: rich, handsome, charming, primarily rich Harry (Pedro Pascal). Instead, he woos her. And just as Harry is sweeping Lucy off her feet, her ex, John (Evans), swoops in. He has no private equity dowry. He’s working as a cater waiter at the reception. But … sexily so.
Lucy has to choose, as all movie heroines must: the perfect life, or true love?
Other things happen in the movie. That’s a simplified version of a story that labors to achieve something artier than a “Sweet Home Alabama” or, say, a “Valley Girl.” I say tries, because “Materialists” wears its effort like a Dickensian ghost draped in chains that scrape on the ground as punishment for its sins.
Look, if you ask me, Song’s acclaimed debut, “Past Lives,” was a real honk-shoo-mi-mi-mi. You don’t get it—I fell asleep in the theater. “Materialists” isn’t boring, and that’s nice! However, it’s built with the same structural integrity as a seaside shanty made of sticks and gull poop.
The plot meanders through happenings like a drunken Roomba. At times, it feels like listening to a 4-year-old tell you a story full of “and then THIS happened.” Lucy, whose defining character trait is calculation, reacts to things with inexplicable certainty. This hurts the film most when it comes to the love triangle. How are we to care whom she chooses between these hunks we barely know? Sure, girl, that one’s fine. Oh, or that one! Idk, you know them better than I do.
But hey, stretch with me. Let’s be “Yoga with Adriene” about this. Really give “Materialists” the benefit of a doubt-ward dog.
Actually going to spoil the movie next.
Warned you.
By the end of “Materialists”—or at least one of four to five endings, what with the sticks and gull poop—Lucy realizes that checking boxes to find the perfect match doesn’t work. Harry’s multimillion-dollar Tribeca penthouse, his fancy dinner reservations, his security? They mask his insecurity, for one thing, but they also don’t make Lucy love him. They just make her comfortable. Harry and Lucy negotiate their relationship like an investment. It’s all rational.
Now, Harry’s just as kind as John, the scruffy, struggling actor who lives with two roommates in a falling-apart-ment. I think this is crucial! Among all of the iffy attempts to elevate “Materialists” into something more prestige-y, it best succeeds by declining to offer a villain. Either choice, if it’s a choice Lucy must make, is a good one.
It’s just that John is a better good choice.
There’s little that’s rational about their love. John cannot offer her impromptu trips to Iceland. He can’t even offer her garage parking for their anniversary dinner. But while Harry speaks of Lucy like a valuable, John talks about her like air. She’s judgmental and, yes, materialistic. Her words, not his, but he knows. It’s not that these things don’t matter. He just loves those parts of her, too.
“I’m a beggar for you,” John says to Lucy in the film’s best line. Evans sells the hell out of it. I threw my hands in the air and then elbowed Kelsey too hard.
Do some charity work with me. Think about the irrational plot reflexes of “Materialists” like a small form-and-content marvel. Connection doesn’t need to make sense (or cents), so neither does the movie. It was marketed like a rom-com and packaged like an indie for people who listen to Japanese Breakfast, but it’s really an earnest dork.
Earnestness feels cathartic. I joke all the time about being a rat with a taste for Velveeta and an ambivalence toward nice things. If you get me going at dinner, though, my class resentment quickly asserts itself. Lucy makes ugly sense to me. I, too, dream of marrying rich, and finally, finally correcting my big mistake of being born poor. But what if your lack gave you value? If it didn’t condemn you to loneliness?
Song wrote a clear-eyed, idealistic fantasy. There’s no Hallmark Christmas movie drool about an upwardly mobile woman finding moonstruck bliss with a man who, like, sells dirt for a living. It is hard to be poor together. It will cause friction. And yet, the broke boy “wins” at the end this time. He shouldn’t, but he must. The alternative may be more realistic, but reality is too obscene to bear. Let the rats dream.
Also: “I’m a beggar for you”? That’s some Hozier shit. Gosh damn.
One rad thing
Can we get a little commotion for the “Call Me By Your Name” soundtrack this summer?
Over the weekend, my friend Beth and I went to catch Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 breakthrough at the Paramount Theatre’s Summer Classic Film Series. Not sure how many times I’ve seen “Call Me By Your Name” now. We’re flying close to 20.
Guadagnino assembled the soundtrack himself, and it’s always impressed me how well it melds seemingly disparate sounds: classical music, ’80s Europop, Sufjan Stevens.
Composer John Adams’ “Hallelujah Junction - 1st Movement,” which plays over the opening titles, is a Pavlovian trigger for desire. Songs like “Paris Latino” instantly transport you to the film’s time and place without falling into cliche. Guadagnino has characterized Stevens’ two original songs, “Mystery of Love” and “Visions of Gideon,” as the film’s de facto narration. But for moi, the rearranged version of his 2010 song “Futile Devices” is just as essential to the story as the peach.
FYI: Armie Hammer dancing to “Love My Way” has only gotten funnier with age.
Outbox
OK, I admit that I am a writer who blows past word counts like Sammy Hagar in a 55 mph zone. I always edit myself down before I file! It was excruciatingly hard to do so for a recent story about fresh faces to the Emmy conversation.
For Backstage, I interviewed seven actors whose performances deserve first-time notice from the Television Academy. Everyone so generously filled their 20-minute interview slots with thoughtful answers about craft and influences. Sooo many gems had to be abandoned to that great Google Doc version history in the sky.
“Dying for Sex” star Jenny Slate told me about her favorite Carol Burnett performance. I tricked Britt Lower of “Severance” into talking about “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Tracy Ifeachor of “The Pitt” crafted such a beautiful metaphor about planes that it simply could not be translated into printed words.
Along with those three geniuses, I had lovely convos with Nathan Lee Graham (“Mid-Century Modern”), Cooper Koch (“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”), Patrick Schwarzenegger (“The White Lotus”), and Erin Doherty (“Adolescence”).
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When I finished talking with “The Residence” star Uzo Aduba during a whirlwind tour of her past roles, she said it was like being on “This is Your Life.” Not wrong! Also for Backstage, I hunted for clues about how Aduba developed her acting craft, from “Orange is the New Black” to “Mrs. America” and beyond. She was very stoked that I brought up “Steven Universe”! Read the story here.
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The final two parts of my Pride Month series about Texas’ Kind Clinic—exploring their work in HIV prevention and gender-affirming care—are now up at The Barbed Wire. You can read those stories here and here.
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I can’t stop telling everyone I know about this “Radiolab” episode that investigates a weird sugar in breastmilk that babies can’t digest. What a hook, right? Or, what a latching-on point, as the case may be. Listen to it here.
I think the thing about this movie is that it is a play.