“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” So begins Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a biting account of a society where marriage was an economic proposal. But as Celine Song’s new movie, Materialists, which got its Irish release on August 13th, shows, times have changed. For the men in possession of good fortune are dwindling, and what is more, new requirements for eligibility have entered the dating market. Men in want of a wife should also be in possession of above-average height and at least passable good looks. It is no wonder that the movie’s main character is a professional matchmaker.
Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson, is a matchmaker for those who can afford her; as Harry (Pedro Pascal) puts it, she is a luxury good. The movie begins with her clients listing their expectations for their future partners, and one wonders how anybody is able to find anybody who meets their requirements. Women want a man who is tall, rich, educated, and good-looking. Men want women who are attractive and significantly younger than they are. Lucy sees the shallowness and ugliness of people who only regard their potential partners as sets of numbers: age, salary, height, BMI. If there is someone with a good reason for cynicism towards the dating world, it is Lucy. But she is very good at what she does, as she is about to attend the ninth wedding that is the result of her matchmaking skills.
At this very wedding, she meets Harry, the rich brother of the rich groom, tall and good-looking. He is a ‘unicorn’, a matchmaking industry term for a man who has the Holy Trinity: the height, the good looks, and a large income. It is the fact that men like Harry do actually exist that keeps unrealistic expectations alive. If they were simply a fantasy, everybody would need to get a little more realistic. The plot becomes interesting when Lucy’s ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor and part-time waiter, turns out to be working for the catering company serving the wedding. Their interaction introduces the love triangle at the heart of the film, one beautiful and successful woman and two eligible bachelors, both good looking (and tall) but one poor and one rich.
Materialists was a movie made with the purpose of illustrating an idea: that people are not an aggregation of attributes but individuals, and need to be treated as such. At times, the movie feels like a morality play, with characters being stand-ins for one view or another. They keep articulating but never develop personalities of their own. Director-writer Celine Song drives her singular point home with relentlessness. At one point, Lucy’s client screams, “I am a person, not merchandise”. In refusing to view people as merely a collection of qualities, the film ends up doing what it stands against; Lucy’s two lovers are not fully fleshed out people but mere representations of the two extremes of personal wealth. We never see Lucy have a conversation with either John or Harry about anything other than dating, values, or finances. That Lucy picks John because they are a better match is only shown, but in the absence of seeing said connection on the screen, it simply seems like Lucy is becoming a martyr for the cause of non-transactional dating.
This is the big difference between Materialists and Past Lives, Song’s 2023 debut film (also a love triangle), wherein every decision made was earned and understood, although sometimes painfully. Both movies show that connection is rare and worthy of treasuring. Song clearly had similar themes in mind while working on them. Past Lives portrayed the raw vulnerability of interhuman relationships and the possibility of loving someone unselfishly in all its consequences. There are glimmers of the genius of Past Lives in Materialists, such as when John and Lucy reminisce about what could have been. But the movie ultimately falls flat in comparison, because while Past Lives was telling a story, Materialists was only making a point. One can agree or disagree with said point, but it detracts from it as a work of art.
No one is going to be watching Materialists in fifteen years for the witty dialogue or the chemistry between the leads, but maybe as an anthropological study of the 2020s dating market, which is neither biting enough to be good satire nor layered enough to be a comprehensive social investigation. Celine Song believes in love, believes in love not in a trivial, but in an idealistic, transcendental way. It is this belief that made her write a movie as achingly beautiful as Past Lives that also makes her fall short when writing about the meat market of modern dating. She may be the last romantic left in Hollywood.
