Director: Celine Song
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
Screenplay: Celine Song
117 mins. Rated R for language and brief sexual material.

Celine Song burst onto the directing scene a few years back with one of my favorites from that year, Past Lives, a wonderfully introspective and personal look at longing and relationships that was singular and breathtaking. Now, she’s following it up with Materialists, a very different film that still examines relationships through a slightly more clinical and cynical lens. It’s a bit more of a mixed bag this time around, and I walked away very much in the middle on it, but I’ve also had a difficult time getting it out of my head.

Lucy (Dakota Johnson, The Social Network), an ambitious and calculating professional matchmaker residing in New York City, is celebrating at the wedding of one of her clients when she meets the groom’s brother, Harry (Pedro Pascal, Gladiator II), a “unicorn” in the matchmaker world, someone who is a perfect match in every way. That same night, she bumps into her old flame, John (Chris Evans, Knives Out), who is bussing tables and still working on his acting career. As she tries to uncover why Harry has any interest in her at all, she also finds that she’s entering John’s orbit once again.

Materialists is ambitious, moreso than Past Lives, and that’s notable from the opening, depicting what is later described as the first relationship in the history of humanity. Song’s film is more a dissection of modern and historical “romance” and also a preemptive postmortem for modern dating. Lucy’s entire existence boils down to a numbers game of matching potential partners, and Song smartly refrains from being overly-stylistic. In traditional rom-coms, we’d likely see a bunch of equations onscreen as she puts together these elements and describes the pairings, but Song is confident in her writing, and she doesn’t need to overdo the style in favor of her actors and their work.

The performances are all strong (though I have a very difficult time believing Chris Evans as a schlub struggling in relationships and work), and the chemistry, particularly between Johnson and Pascal, is powerful. Johnson is able to lead this talented cast quite well, as she’s in every scene, and she’s always in control of the room.

Where Materialists struggles is in its tonal shifts. The movie is so heavy-handed about its cynical and pretentious view of the modern dating world and romance in general, and I think that’s what Song is aiming for. Materialists wants to be cynical and pretentious…until it doesn’t. When it makes that turn toward the more emotional and less-calculating plot elements, I think the narrative falters and nearly topples. It makes for an underwhelming ending following a solid first two acts.

It’s third-act narrative choices don’t completely derail Materialists. Celine Song has crafted an ambitious and unique deconstruction of a classic romance trope, and it has some great performances within, especially Dakota Johnson’s work as Lucy. I wish Song were able to handle the emotional narrative beats as well as she did with Past Lives, but she does show that she can handle the biting commentary in the first half. There are definitely enough strengths to recommend Materialists, though I wouldn’t recommend making it a date night movie.

3/5
-Kyle A. Goethe