Don’t Call This Smart, Witty Film A Rom-Com

The label “rom-com” conjures a host of thoughts: the “meet cute”, a wacky, loudmouth sidekick for the main character, silly pratfalls, slapstick physical comedy and big broad emotions that never resemble life. Some of the best rom-coms are certainly entertaining, but they never feel connected to the human condition or the difficulty of maintaining long-term relationships in the real world. They’re cinematic comfort food.

So, it’s a good thing when I say that writer-director Celine Song’s Materialists isn’t really part of that genre. The marketing folks may be pushing it as the first real rom-com in years, but Song wisely and adeptly sidesteps all the tropes of the typical rom-com to deliver a smart, witty film about finding dates and mates in 21^st century America.

Lucy (a charming Dakota Johnson) is a literal matchmaker who works at a New York agency that pairs eligible men and women with potential soulmates or at the least good matches to enhance their social status. For Lucy, finding the perfect someone is an equation consisting of height, looks, occupation, earnings, hobbies and the like. Match up the data and love, or a sufficient amount of affection, will follow.

Harry (an equally charming Pedro Pascal) is a private equities manager with hedge fund wealth, good looks, charm, social status, etc. He ticks all the boxes. Lucy and her matchmaking colleagues refer to him as a “unicorn”, perfect and exceedingly rare. Lucy tries to recruit Harry as a client, but to her surprise, Harry is interested in … Lucy. For Harry, love is elusive, but a good match would be as valuable as the deals that fill his workdays. After all, a marriage is just another form of a merger and acquisition.

John (Chris Evans in a de-glamorized, “Aw, shucks” Gary Cooper mode), is Lucy’s ex-boyfriend, a struggling actor still living with two roommates years after their break-up. He suffers from a failure to thrive. Lucy left him largely because he seemed like a bad financial bet. Cold, but not entirely without merit. John is the path to life on a plateau when Harry is in a steep upward trajectory. (The film isn’t named Materialists because all of our characters are solely focused on true love.)

Celine Song is proving to be a master of the female-centric love triangle. Her 2023 film, Past Lives, weaved a “what might have been” budding adolescent romance and a story of immigrant identity into the richest narrative tapestry of 2023. (It was # 2 on my Top 10 Films of 2023.) With this new film, she examines the real-world pursuit of a mate where an intelligent woman balances the rush of the romance that may fade against the responsibility and ambition in your potential mate that may decide your economic future.

The secret weapon in Song’s films is her astute screenplays. The phrase “well-observed” gets thrown around in film reviews all the time, but in this instance it very much applies. She perfectly treads that line of showing us her characters inner thoughts and motivations rather than simply telling us about them. She avoids all manner of narrative shortcuts and allows her stories to unfold gradually. As a director, she’s willing to quietly sit in a moment, to simply pause with her characters rather than solely using dialogue to drive the narrative. Like a veteran jazz musician, she uses silence to great effect.

As in Past Lives, Song is more concerned with her female protagonist than her male suitors. Harry and John are well-conceived, fleshed out characters, but the film is less interested in who Lucy might chose to spend her life with than why she’s making the choices she’s making. Is it shallow to be concerned about your financial future? To choose security over a passion that may be fleeting?

Much of the humor in the film flows from Lucy’s cynicism about life and love. Her jaded, matter-of-fact assessment of courtship is a breath of fresh air for a genre where women are so often swayed by flowers and romantic dinners. When you live your life as a skeptic, you will rarely be disappointed. You expect your love interests to fail you. But, as Materialists aptly points out, if you hide behind a wall of cynicism, you’ll never be pleasantly surprised, either.