"Marriage is a business deal and it always has been.” Lucy (Dakota Johnson)
Matchmaker Lucy knows her game well, for the conjunction of money and marriage is a top motif in Materialists, a rom-com more than that. It manages to ramp up talk about the modern expectations of love and marriage to the level that it is an important essay and a charming movie that pulls no punches about hook-up’s challenges today and forever.
Before the film slips during the last third into the usual rom-com tropes, playwright, director, and sometime matchmaker Celine Song not only exposes the mandates of match making, she also parses the challenges of people being who they are and proud of it. It’s a Wonderful Life does well claiming the value of the individual life, and I place Song’s masterpiece right behind that classic.
Much of the success of this estimable summer movie and now my favorite rom-com is due partly to Johnson’s cool representation of the modern "It" girl living in a town she can barely afford (NYC), matching largely misfits, and trying to overcome the clichés that begin to plague her new wealthy romance, Harry (Pedro Pascal), and her poor ex- boyfriend, John (Chris Evans).
Song peppers her drama with Oscar-worthy dialogue, almost poetic yet even more real than I expected. She did pen and direct the Oscar-nominated Previous Lives, another sterling examination of love and its heart-breaking vagaries. The clash between love and money is eventually trumped by discussion of self-worth, whereby offering up your soul to a counselor and promoting your image in the matching are at odds.
The solution is of course to know your self-worth and be honest in your presentation. Easy enough until Harry enters Lucy’s life ("Once you've had your first $400 haircut you can't go back to Supercuts"), which challenges her notion of loving unfettered with materialism. To the film’s favor, it’s honest about the reality of matchmaking, about marrying rich as a box to be checked. The honesty about the business of matching and the reality of love’s place in the bonding process is refreshing as is the reality of maybe dying alone, even after changing diapers not for babies.
Be kind objecting to the usual rom-com requirement for a happy ending. Jane Austen would approve Song’s vision of the financial ingredient while she would understand the many demands of pure love without it.
Materialists
Director: Celine Song (Past Lives)
Screenplay: Song
Cast: Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Gray), Chris Evans (Captain America)
Rating: R
Length: 1h 56m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com