Materialists

 

Writer/director Celine Song

director on the set with Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans

director with Dakota Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MATERIALISTS       C+                                                                                                           USA  Finland  (117 mi)  2025  d: Celine Song

Marriage is a business deal and it always has been.                                                                    —Lucy (Dakota Johnson)

From the maker of the highly celebrated Past Lives (2023), a smaller, indie-styled film that brought intelligence and a melancholic intimacy to the immigrant experience, yet this is a complete turnaround from that, where you wonder what this director had in mind, opting for a lightweight, mainstream romance comedy that veers from sheer fantasy to darker realities, never really distinguishing itself in any way, with no real likeable characters except a rather unremarkable down-and-out actor whose career is stalled, with the world seemingly passing him by, yet he’s at least identifiable.  The way the film plays out, it’s his very ordinariness that stands out, offering a distinctive appeal that no other character has, as he’s relatable and more openly human.  The other characters, not so much, feeling like they exist in some fantasy world, like an extension of the artificiality of Greta Gerwig’s BARBIE (2023), where love is callously viewed as a business transaction.  The film invests a lot of energy developing that theme, luring us into a world where money makes everything better, where the luxuries of life are equated with success and the American Dream, making the subjects feel like they are finally worthy of love, which is all a rather pretentiously ridiculous entry into the world of romance, like it’s part of a capitalist realization, holding up a mirror to just how shallow we are as a society, with the explosion of social media becoming increasingly calculating and crudely insensitive, extending a social class prejudice that without money love doesn’t exist.  This, of course, only exists in the world of movies, which is notoriously described as a dream machine.  So right from the outset it’s hard to get behind this movie, which isn’t that different from Sean Baker’s Academy Award-winning Anora (2024), which also equated love with money and success.  Once money is removed from the situation, love dies like a house of cards, sending characters into a tailspin of emotional turmoil.  So apparently this is the current fascination of Hollywood, (The Rise of the Anti-Cinderella Story).  What message this conveys about real life is hard to measure, as these feel like exaggerated circumstances that bear no resemblance to the lives we are actually living, unlike the satirical comedies of Roy Andersson, for instance, whose SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000) and YOU, THE LIVING (2007) bring a Kafkaesque absurdity to the forefront of the living, accentuating the absurd and comical elements of simple everyday situations.  But that’s not what this is, as it feels wrapped in a consumerist paradise on display, where monetary value is equated with human value, which is ethically problematic.  But in this case, the title says it all, as it means what it says.  As a playwright, Song has an ear for dialogue, but the relatively bland characters continually utter what sounds like scripted dialogue that feels superficially one-dimensional, where you wonder what really drew the filmmaker to this insipid material, though one should never underestimate the importance of romance.  In a different era any film posing the question whether to marry for love or for money would have been relegated to a Chick flick, a notoriously derogatory term, played for a healthy mix of laughs and sex appeal in Howard Hawks’ star-driven cinematic spectacle of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), or any Judy Holliday movie from the same time period.  While there are some interesting musical choices, like Baby Rose singing a soulful classic at a wedding that has been covered by many jazz and blues artists since the 50’s, That's All YouTube (3:26), Marc Webb’s much more inventive and better acted (500) Days of Summer (2009) blows this out of the water.  Watching people fall in love is a lost art in contemporary movies, as they began to disappear from theaters as soon as people started calling them rom-coms, (Where Have Rom-Coms Gone? (And Our Nostalgic ...), now lost in the rush to produce huge blockbusters, often premiering on streaming platforms. 

Opening in a strange prelude sequence that makes us feel that we’re in another movie, it’s a story of first love in an era of cavemen during the Stone Age, something of a stretch in conceiving an Adam and Eve scenario of the first humans to fall in love, but we’re quickly rushed back into the present as we’re introduced to Lucy (Dakota Johnson, daughter of actor Don Johnson and actress Melanie Griffith), an extremely successful matchmaker for a high-end dating service whose latest couples pairing success is her 9th marriage, receiving applause and adulation from her coworkers at Adore Matchmaking, a Manhattan-based company that strives to bring couples together, suggesting they will find the right partner – for a price.  Dating apps, or in this case matchmaking services, lead to people buying and trading themselves like merchandise, ostensibly designed to make things easier, but the reality is much darker and more complicated.  Shot on 35mm by Shabier Kirchner, who also shot her earlier film, this bears some resemblance to Elizabeth Lo’s Chinese documentary Mistress Dispeller (2024), as the director draws from personal experience working for 6 months as a professional matchmaker a decade ago for exclusively affluent people in order to fund her writing career, but this feels more fantasy based, as everything revolves around money, suggesting love can be bought and customized, with clients making ridiculously precise, superficial specifications of exactly what they are looking for, like picking out a house or a piece of furniture.  At the wedding of her latest success story, she repeats the mantra, “Who our partner is determines our whole life,” before meeting the brother of the groom, Harry (Pedro Pascal), an extravagantly wealthy financial capitalist who represents the pinnacle of success, the ultimate “catch,” described in the business as a unicorn, supposedly everything any woman could dream of, intelligent, tall, handsome, and filthy rich, checking all the boxes, as they say.  While he overhears her sales pitch while passing out business cards, he expresses a genuine interest in meeting her, but she defers, suggesting he pursue romantic prospects through Adore, hoping he will find the perfect match.  While they are flirting, however, in something of a comical surprise, Lucy runs into her more disheveled ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), working as a server at the wedding, bringing her drink of choice, where it’s clear they have a history together.  A struggling actor, he’s looking for extra income, as we quickly learn that their relationship fizzled due to money concerns when both were struggling actors, a dream he has continued to pursue, though he still doesn’t have a manager, won’t take commercial jobs, yet is upset with the way his life has turned out.   In stark contrast is another one of Lucy’s long-time clients, Sophie (Zoë Winters), who has repeatedly struck out in the dating game, becoming a seemingly hopeless case, with Adore, supposedly experts in achieving that perfect match, discovering it’s very difficult to find the man of her dreams, privately asserting “There’s no place in the market for her.”  When Lucy sets her up with that perfect date, he ends up sexually assaulting her in what amounts to date rape, a disastrous turn of events that precipitates a lawsuit against the company, where it’s clear these are lives that are being toyed with.  Despite the background checks and aligning all the perfect algorithms, occasionally a dark and sinister character slips through, inflicting enormous damage, as Sophie’s self-esteem plummets, leaving her emotionally and psychologically devastated, feeling permanently scarred, yet the company doesn’t like to talk about failures, as it’s all about conveying success to a public that needs to believe in dreams.  What’s clear at the outset is how the company views relationships as assets and liabilities, suggesting dating is a calculated risk, like a financial investment, so what this film really lacks is the personal intimacy created in Song’s earlier film.  

With that in mind, Lucy starts dating Harry on her own, where, exactly like Anora, she’s quickly won over by the massive scale of his financial success, living in a $12 million dollar Tribeca penthouse while leading an immensely privileged lifestyle, showing impeccable taste, regularly taking her to all the upscale expensive restaurants that most people can only afford on special occasions, becoming a whirlwind affair of glamor and indulgence, just like the man of her dreams.  While everything points to that perfect Prince Charming Hollywood scenario playing out before our eyes, the director suddenly subverts those expectations, pulling the rug out from under us and chooses to go in a different direction, with the film getting messier and more complicated, as it turns out she doesn’t really love her perfect match, while he himself may be incapable of love, refusing to allow himself to be exposed to that degree of emotional vulnerability.  It’s all about success, pressing the right buttons, making all the right decisions to maintain his quality of life, which he values more than anything else, even her.  While this may come as something as a surprise, the real surprise was seeing walkouts when viewers were disappointed to discover this was not a happily-ever-after storybook ending, suggesting viewer expectation plays a large role in this film, as it doesn’t follow the script, veering off on an unexpected tangent, as she breaks up with Harry, only to find herself evaluating her own life, spending more time with John, who lives that typical working class life where daily frustrations play into what he’s constantly forced to deal with, yet he’s maintained a certain trust with Lucy even after their breakup, never actually falling out of love with her, offering a sympathetic ear whenever she needs it.  As fate would have it, she sublets her apartment for a week as she was planning to be whisked off to Iceland with Harry before they amicably broke things off, leaving her stranded, without a place to stay, but John’s multiple roommates live in apartment squalor, so that’s not really an option, instead they head on an upstate road excursion together in his beat-up Volvo, where they spontaneously crash a wedding staged at an outdoor countryside barn, suddenly taking themselves more seriously, finally asking those existential questions, like are they really back together again.  In the end, not sure it actually matters, as the soulless characters display no actual chemistry onscreen and are simply not compelling enough for us to care, where it all seems to play out in a land of make believe, where the materialistic view of life is just as much of a scam as the Prince Charming view of romance, with marriage viewed as a means to climb the social ladder, exactly as it was back in the days of Jane Austen novels.  On the day before the film release, the director provided a “movie syllabus” list of films that influenced the making of the film, many of which go back to the 80’s and 90’s, most likely films the director grew up watching, Materialists movie syllabus via Celine - A24 - X, but this feels more like the escapist television series Sex and the City than any of those referenced films, which conspicuously leaves out Susan Sandler’s play turned into her own film adaptation in Joan Micklin Silver’s CROSSING DELANCEY (1988), where it would be easy to imagine Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, or Rachel McAdams inhabiting this role with similar results, though it does attempt to get under the surface.  Arguably the best scene is the closing credits sequence, a long, well-choreographed final shot that exudes personality and diversity, topped off by a wonderfully quirky John Prine song, originally written for Billy Bob Thornton’s DADDY AND THEM (2001), but featuring a superb rendition with Iris DeMent, John Prine and Iris DeMent - In Spite of Ourselves (Live From ... YouTube (5:04). 

Party Girl

 

Director Daisy von Scherler Mayer

Mayer on the night of the premiere

Mayer with Parker Posey at the premiere

Mother and child, with Daisy as a child Cupid

PARTY GIRL            B                                                                                                           USA  (94 mi)  1995  d: Daisy von Scherler Mayer

They threw me a surprise birthday party without my permission.                                               —Mary (Parker Posey)

The first feature film to be shown in its entirety on a then-novel piece of technology called the Internet on June 3, 1995, likely seen by only a few hundred viewers, streamed in the Seattle (the tech mecca at the time) offices of a web hosting company Point of Presence (operating on an Internet speed of only 1.5 Mbps, arguably the lowest fidelity movie that has ever streamed over the Internet, as the average today is 42.86 Mbps), with actress Parker Posey even appearing live online to introduce the movie while simultaneously appearing at the Egyptian Theater opening as part of the Seattle Film Festival.  Never a box-office success, this is the film that made Posey a star in her first leading role, the ultimate 90’s indie girl, dubbed by Richard Corliss in a 1997 Time magazine article as the “Queen of the Indies,” referring to her ubiquitous presence playing eccentric characters in low-budget independent features like Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming (1995), Mark Waters’ The House of Yes (1997), my own personal favorite along with Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool (1997), working again with him later in Fay Grim (2006) and Ned Rifle (2014), also Rebecca Miller’s PERSONAL VELOCITY (2002), Zoe Cassavetes’ BROKEN ENGLISH (2007), Michael Walker’s Price Check (2012), Woody Allen’s Irrational Man (2015) and Café Society (2016), and Kogonada’s 2017 Top Ten List #5 Columbus before recently joining The White Lotus television series as a Xanax pill-popping Southern Belle.  Starring in close to 30 independent films in the 1990’s alone, Parker accumulated quite an eclectic résumé, cementing herself as one of cinema’s greatest and most underrated comedic actresses, becoming the “It girl” of the era, a term associated with actress Clara Bow in the 1920’s. Known for her sharp wit, eccentric charm, and impeccable comedic timing, from her early days in independent cinema to her ventures into mainstream Hollywood, Parker Posey has consistently defied expectations, proving herself to be one of the most versatile and captivating actresses of her generation.  Unlike many Hollywood actresses who fit into traditional molds, Posey has always embraced the weird, the eccentric, and the unconventional.  Her characters are often flawed, chaotic, and hilariously self-absorbed, yet they remain deeply relatable.  One of her greatest strengths is her ability to deliver dialogue in a way that feels completely natural yet strangely heightened, as she always finds a way to make her characters feel authentic.  Moreover, Posey has never been afraid to take risks, having gravitated toward projects that allow her to showcase her unique comedic sensibility.  This commitment to authenticity has earned her a dedicated fan base that continues to grow, paving the way for a new kind of leading lady, one who didn’t need to conform to Hollywood’s rigid beauty standards or conventional storytelling tropes.  Other mischievous actresses like Greta Gerwig, Aubrey Plaza, and Jenny Slate owe a lot to Posey’s trailblazing work, as she helped redefine what it means to be a comedic actress, proving that being quirky, intellectual, and slightly unhinged can be just as captivating as being glamorous or traditionally romantic.  As far as the director goes, with a long career working mostly in television (her last actual movie was more than a decade ago), she grew up in New York during the 80’s, born into a Hollywood family, the daughter of famous luminaries, including her mother, theater actress Sasha von Scherler who appears in the film, and her father Paul Avila Mayer, an American soap opera television writer and producer, while her grandfather Edwin Justus Mayer was a famed Hollywood screwball comedy screenwriter, where she just happened to be a party girl in real life, drawing from many of her own personal experiences for a film that links its connection to youth culture.   

Budgeted at $150,000, brilliantly shot on location in pre-gentrification Lower Manhattan by a first-time director in just 19 days, Parker, who built a career largely playing supporting roles, never really finding crossover success as a mainstream star, earning just $75 dollars a day, plays a free-spirited, club-hopping 23-year old night owl named Mary, embodying the essence of 1990’s New York cool, where the film was ahead of its time, as style is the substance here, with an attention to detail blending comedy, fashion, and a deep love for books in a way that has made it an enduring cult classic.  Something of a fashionista with her distinctive personal style, often playful, vintage-inspired, and effortlessly cool, with a wardrobe stolen from the closets of women hosting parties, where her influence extends beyond film, Mary shares an apartment with her aspiring DJ roommate Leo (Guillermo Díaz), growing increasingly irritated with her former boyfriend and bouncer Nigel (Liev Schreiber with a British accent), making a living by organizing illegal rave parties in Manhattan’s underground club scene, but is arrested for charging customers at an unauthorized wild party and evicted from her Manhattan apartment for nonpayment of rent, causing her to be desperate enough to embark in a new direction.  Needing money badly, she finds work as a stamper, book stacker, and desk clerk in the quiet confines of a neighborhood branch of the public library under the auspices of her overworked godmother Judy Lindendorf (Sasha von Scherler, the director’s mother), the head librarian reeling from budget cuts, who still holds a grudge over just how irresponsible Mary’s late mother was, described as “a woman with no common sense,” while her late father was “a man without a conscience,” and continues to hold that against Mary, expressing doubts that she is sufficiently intelligent or reliable enough for the task, but she is family.  A little messy and discombobulated, specifically set within the LGBTQ community in Manhattan, offering authentic depictions of underrepresented communities, with many tasting freedom in the city for the very first time, often coming from towns where there was rampant prejudice, yet there is a repetitious use of quintessential club house music that dates the film, acting like a time capsule, selected by New York nightlife fixture Bill Coleman, reflective of the multi-cultural influence of the popular 90’s TV show In Living Color, along with a plethora of diverse secondary characters, where people of different ethnicities are seen dancing together, filling out a threadbare storyline.  Mary rebels against what is expected of her by displaying many of the qualities of the stereotypical librarian, who are typically women, where changing her physical appearance is a way of creating an important shift in personal identity, donning horn-rimmed glasses, sticking a pencil in her pulled-back hair, while adopting severe grey flannel suits over mini-skirts and designer stilettos, laying claim to a legitimacy by exuding both the look of a more mature woman and a glamor girl in what amounts to a love letter to public libraries, suggesting it’s cool to read and also have fun.  Making one blunder after another, she finds herself baffled by the Dewey Decimal System, calling it “antiquated and idiotic,” with a poster of Melvil Dewey hanging on the library wall continually frowning down on her, where she is reminded by Judy that “A trained monkey learned this system on PBS in a matter of hours,” growing so frustrated that one evening she sneaks into the library after hours with a beer and a joint and has an epiphany, seen euphorically dancing around the library to club music, suddenly unlocking the key to the entire order and system of organization.  Ironically, all that hard-earned library knowledge has now been replaced by a computer, making the Card Catalog system obsolete, faded out of time, yet oozing with nostalgic vibes.

Co-written by the director with Harry Birckmayer, shot on 16mm but blown up to 35mm, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995, the film led to a television series the following year with a new cast, but was quickly cancelled, never able to realize that same sardonic tone, and of course, there is no substitute for the driving engine that is Parker Posey, yet the re-issue of the film screened at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York and is part of a permanent exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.  Released the same year as Todd Haynes’ Safe (1995), Gregg Araki’s THE DOOM GENERATION (1995), and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), the film captures that liminal period between the AIDS epidemic and the sanitizing project of Rudy Giuliani’s mayorship, a time when dance clubs played vinyl records, cigarette butts piled up in ashtrays at the bar, and entry prices were still affordable, where a repeating visual cue has Mary visiting a local Lebanese street-cart food vendor, Mustafa (Omar Townsend in his only movie), who is also an aspiring teacher and romantic interest, always heard placing the exact same order, “Can I have a falafel with hot sauce, a side order of baba ganoush, and a seltzer, please.”  Theirs is a rocky romance, actually having sex in the library after hours, but she forgets to close the windows during a rainstorm when she locks up, causing all kinds of grief with Judy, as the water-soaked damage destroys some important volumes of poetry.  Despite all the shenanigans, the film is a mish-mosh of a burgeoning subculture of rave joints and the rise of the Internet, accentuating a heavily talked about queer 90’s New York club culture that has come and gone, as the film’s main creative forces were women and LGBTQ people, organically espousing an attitude of inclusivity while also being incredibly fun and positive throughout.  Because the cast of characters is so large and the nature of the story is episodic, it can often feel populated by sketches of characters, where all these interconnecting parts are actually much more interesting than the film itself, which is a bit chaotic and disjointed, yet confusion is part of its enduring mystery.  Epitomizing the early 90’s rave era, with a deep immersion into the library sciences, Posey exhibits style and a brash attitude, portraying an over-the-top character who isn’t perfect, by any means, prone to homophobic language and inappropriate Middle Eastern cultural references, yet it’s hard to take your eyes off her.  While not from New York City, a Baltimore transplant to a small town in the Deep South, many of Posey’s most iconic roles place her there, making the city her own existential playground, where her smart characters and uninhibited energy exude a self-aware, sarcastic cynicism, traits that came to be associated with abrasive and honest New Yorkers in popular culture while also serving as an implicit critical response to the conservative reshaping of the city in the eighties, taking inspiration from cinema’s other quintessential “New York girls,” such as Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly in Blake Edwards’ BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961) and Diane Keaton’s title character in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977).  While claiming Carole Lombard as an influence, Posey may come closest to the widespread appeal of 40’s and 50’s actress Judy Holliday, where her unbridled enthusiasm is mixed with an extreme vulnerability, where the refreshing ability to shift her mood quickly from frenetic screwball comedy to serious introspection provides a startling influx of emotion.  An institution in indie cinema, Posey’s unique energy and fearless approach to acting have made her one of the most beloved and influential performers of her time.

Daisy von Scherler Mayer's Top 10 | Current  Criterion