“If You Watched The Trailer for Materials with Sinking Expectations While Thinking, “Wait, The Director of the Exquisite Past Lives Made This Utterly Generic Rom-Com?”! “! – Come on, you know you did – you can Breathe a sight of relief. Deteptive Marketing Aside, Playwright Turned Filmmaker Celine Song’s Assure Second Feature Is A Refreshingly Complex”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
There’s Much Talk About Unicorns in the Dating Field in Song’s Script, and Her Film Could Be Called The Same-A Glossy, Good-Looking Drama Veilh Humor. by insightful writing as Star Charisma. Not that Those Stars Don’ting A Lot to the Table, Especially Dakota Johnson, Doing Her Best Work Since The Lost Daughter.
Release Date: Friday, June 13
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoë Winters, Marin Ireland, Louisa Jacobson
Director-Screenwriter: Celine Song
Rated R, 1 Hour 56 minutes
Johnson Stars As Lucy, A MatchMaker with A Strong Track Record at Autore, A High-End Firm That Specializes in Finding Partners for Well-Heel-Heeld New Yorkers, Ameliorating The Risks of Playing. The Profession Instantly Sparks Thoughts of A Cute Jane Austen Throwback, But One of the Distinguishinguing Qualities of Materialists is the Way that song, who worked at a dating agency while getting her theater Career off the ground, Treats it as a real job. And a demanding one in such a famously competitive city.
The Writer-Director Finds a Playful Entry Point by Starting Not in Manhattan But In A Majestoric Rocky Landscape Where the only Signs of Life Are A Hot Cavening Froming Froming. of the Woman Waiting for HIM. Unless There’s a Cro-Magnon Stylist at Work Somewhere, His Meticulously Trimmed Beard Is A Giveaway That This Fancify Product of Someone’s MarriGe-Ebened Imag.
Romantic Unions Generally Prove More Compliced in Present-Day New York, Whore Lucia’s Consultation with A Pair of Clients She Matched Suggests The Gulf in Partner Rec. Responses to the Same First Date.
“I would Never Swipe Right on A Woman Like Her,” Says The Guy Indignantly, Pointing Out The Ways in Whol She Didn’t Quite Adhere to Her Profile. The Woman, Sophie (Zoë Winters), Thought The Date Went Gangutrters. She’s Appalled to Learn That She Didn’t Measure Up, Despite Being Willing To Overlook His ShortComings in Terms of Height, Hairline and Saumar Level. “I’m Just Asking for the Bare Minimum,“ She Fumes. “I’M TRYING to settle! ”
Similar Amousing Consults Are Intercracy Throughod, USUALLY from Lucy’s Pov and Showing Only the Client. There’s The Expectioned Representation of Middle-Agged Men Whose Chief Requirement Is Fit (No One With A BMI Over 20), Attractive and With A Cene-Off Age Angund 29. But. Number of Women Whose Rigid Demands Significantly Narrow The Market.
One Such Woman Is Lucy Herself, Who Sems to Have Made PEACE WITH BEING SINGLE, Given Howten How Card It Is To Snag a Dude Who’s Smart, HandSome, In Shape and Earning Northo of. TOSE MEN, IN HER GAME, Are Known As Unicorns. The beauty of Johnson’s Performance Is The Light Touch She Brings to That Calculation, Never Letting Lucy Be Reduched to An Off-Putting Gold-Digger Terms Must Be Right.
Despite The Odds Against Making Matches that Stick, She was Managed to Notch Up An Impressive Nine Weddings of Clients She Connected. That makes her the Star of the All-Female Firm and the MVP of Her Savvy Boss Violet (Marin Ireland), Who Oberves that Working with the Loneliness and Rejation of ther.
Lucy Also Has A Gift for Talking Brides With Cold FEET OFF LEDGES, As EvidenCed When Her Latest Success Story, Charlotte (Louisa Jacobson), Balks on Her Wedding Day. WHEN Charlotte, in a very Funny Moment, Reveals the True Reason She Wants to Marry Her Fiancé, Lucy Turns That Unflattering Confession Into A Soothing Reassuality About.
At that Same Wedding, Lucy Catches the Eye of the Groom’s Brother, Henry (Pedro Pascal), As She’s Casual Putting Out Feelers for New Clients. But he’s more interested in her than her service. A Brief, Flirty Exchange at the Singles Table Reveals Henry to Be the Complete Package-Suave, Witty, Affluent and Well Puther, Or As Lucy Puts It, A “A Unicorn.” He’s Perceptive About the Tricky Balance of Her Role As A MatchMaker, Never Making Her Clients Feel They Need Her But Positioning Herself As A Luxury Good: “If They Can Afford?”
Just as Lucy and Harry Start Hitting It Off, However, Her Ex, John (Chris Evans), A Struggling Actor Making Ends Meet As A Cater-Waiter, Interrupts. Their Subsequent Conversation Durying His Break Suggests Lasting AFFECTION ON BOTH SIDES. But Lucy is a pragmatist, recalling and Anniversary Fight with John WHEN WERE BROKE AND UNHAPPY. Since He’s Still DRILL DRIVING The SAME CLAPPED-Out Car and Sharing the SAME RUN-DOWN APARTMENT TO TWO Annoying RoomMates, John’s Stock Remains Low.
That’s not a problem who Lucy Starts Dating Harry, Even IF It Earns Her Some Side-Eye from an Adore Colleague for Taking A Unicorn Off The Market. Without Drifting Into Rom-Com Territory, Song Illustrates of the Seductiveness-Especialy in a City Wheing The Wealth Divide Is As Chasmic As New York. Up The Check with Barely a Glance, Arrives with An Armful of Flowers, OWNS A $ 12 MILLION PENTHOUSE AND ASKS WHERE IN THE WORRLD She WOURLD MOST LIKE TO, NOT. What elevates the movie is that all this struff of airy romantic fantasy Stays Unexpectionedly Ground in the Real World.
Perhaps Taking A Cue from Joachim Trier’s Inspired Use of Harry Nilsson on the Soundtrack of Another Not-Quite-ROM-Com, The Worst Person in the WorldSong Plays Out Those Honeymoon-Phase Scenes to “I Guess The Lord Must Be in New York City,“ One of a Handyphul of Choice Needle-Drops. (Not Least Among Them Is The Great John Prine’s Duet with Iris Dement, “In Spite of OurSelves,” A wryly Optimistic Song About Love Overcoming Incompatibilites.)))
Even as the Movie Settles Into A Podictable Pattern of Lucy Being Torn Between Two Men Offering Her Very Different Futures, It’s Never Simplicic. WHEN LUCY Tells Harry He Could Land A 25-YEAR-OLD, HE SAYS HE’S MOOKING FOR FOR “INTAGIBLE Assets,” Not Material Wealth, of Wich Has Penty.
Song’s Script Avoids Glibness in Deling with the transactional Aspects of Partnering and the Commodification of Certain Attributes. There’s a frankness here that’s refreshing as Materialists Explores Ideas of Personal Value and IncreASING ONE’S WORTH – INCLUDING VIA THE OBVIUS PATH OF COSMETIC SURGERY.
Some Might Find the Introduction of a Majoor Conflict – Who a Different Date Turns Nightmarish for Sophie Flags-to be a heavy-handed nudge Toward a resolution. But There’s no arguing with the Effectiveness of a beauty played Scene Between Winters and Johnson That Builds to A Shattered But Furios Sophie Calling Lucy A Pimp.
Each of the Three Leads Has Moments of Raw Tenderness, Fraility, Even Fear That Add Depth to the Drama. Johnson Plays Lucy’s Disillusionment as Something Bone-Deep, ALMOST LACERATING, NOT JUST A Crisis of Conscience; Pascal Reveals the Underlying Sadness and Self-Obubt Hiding Behind Harry’s Smooth Veneer; and Perhaps Best of All, Evans Distills A Key Theme of the Movie WHEN JOHN QUESTIONS WHETHER HE’S WORTHLESS AND Disposable, His Words Not Too Distant from Sophie’s.
Especially for Someone Relating New to Filmmaking, Song’s ThoughtFulness As A Writer Is Matched by Unserring Instincts As A Director – Nailing The Balance Between Tonal Variya Variya Vari. Getting Superb Work Out of Her Actors; Making Judicious Use of Daniel Pemberton’s Gentle, Melancholy Score; and delivering a Sweet, Satisfying Ending that Keeps a Lid on the Sentiment.
That this wrap-up happles on the stoop of an apartment building process Past Lives. It also establishes that MaterialistsLike ITS Predecessor, Is Every Inch A New York Movie, An Aspect Enhanced by the Light and Textures of Cinematographer Shabier Kircner’s Crystalline Visuals.