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). 

Past Lives

 

Writer/director Celine Song

Teo Too, Greta Lee, and John Magaro

Celine Song on the set with Greta Lee

PAST LIVES              B                                                                                                               USA  South Korea  (105 mi)  2023  d: Celine Song

I feel so not Korean when I’m with him but also, in some way, more Korean—so weird.               —Nora Moon (Greta Lee)

Celine Song is a South Korean-Canadian director, playwright, and screenwriter whose parents are both artists, moving to Canada at the age of 12, currently based in the United States, having received her degree in playwriting at Columbia University, falling in love with the experimental theater of New York in the 1980’s.  Her play Endlings received its world premiere in 2019 at the American Repertory Theater, having its New York premiere in 2020 at the New York Theatre Workshop, but closed early due to the Covid pandemic, while her first feature-film premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival to near universal acclaim.  Drawing from her own experience of reuniting with a childhood friend after spending decades apart, the film is ostensibly a study of self-divided identity, a contemplation on love, fate, and the choices we make, following two deeply-connected childhood friends, Nora and Hae-sung, who are each other’s childhood sweethearts who lose touch with one another after Nora’s family abruptly emigrates to Canada from South Korea, where their lives take distinctly different trajectories.  Two decades later, following a series of social media connections that also grows strangely silent, they are inexplicably reunited in New York for one fateful week, where watching Wallace Shawn in Louis Malle’s MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981) seems to have been a prerequisite for making this film.  The opening of the film is right out of David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), taking place in a darkened bar where unseen voices are heard commenting on the imagined connections between an Asian woman and two men, one Asian and one white, trying to figure out their relation to one another, expressing a snide condescension toward an Asian-American woman in a potential relationship with a white man, with Song deliberately toying with the audience’s expectations.  In much the same way, this film offers a similar exploration, ultimately becoming a love story between the girl and each of the two men, as the film effortlessly captures the yearning, heartache, and tenderness through a self-reflective, romantic drama ruminating on the dreams and possibilities of what could have been, quietly exploring how people are tied together, including those we leave behind in order to embark on something new, clearly announcing its intentions when we hear the melancholic anguish of Leonard Cohen’s Leonard Cohen - Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Audio) YouTube (2:58).  While some have compared this to the yearning romanticism of Wong Kar-wai or Richard Linklater’s haunting truthfulness, that’s a bit of a stretch, feeling more like hyperbole, as this might have more in common with Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari (2020), another semi-autobiographical take on the director’s own upbringing, or perhaps even John Crowley’s immigrant tale of exile, Brooklyn (2015), with Song envisioning a smaller film that achieves a heavily romanticized intimacy with little to no physical contact, where in the words of the director ('Past Lives' Director Celine Song on How She Made ...), “It’s a movie about ordinary people doing something that is extraordinary but mundane.”  Shot on 35mm by Shabier Kirchner, actually written in 2018, this feels more like an overly calculating first feature, bookended by two departures, with smaller moments and very specific observations, posing philosophical what-if questions that feel workshopped, existing in a netherworld where characters wander in and out of what might have been, where it never really comes to life, feeling more like an escape from reality, or an existential quandary consumed by self-doubt, which is then transferred to the audience.  One supposes that nearly all immigrants are left with a looming question about the person they might have become if they’d never left their home countries.  The film begins with Na-young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae-sung (Yim Seung-min) as children, best friends in every respect, overly competitive in school, where their first date is supervised by their mothers, playfully taking place in a sculpture garden, where Na-young’s mother reveals, “If you leave something behind, you gain something too.”  Living nearby from one another, they always part ways where she ascends up a hill, reminiscent of that steep staircase in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) (2004), which becomes emblematic of their separation once she emigrates, leaving Hae-sung behind.  As an aspiring writer, she is looking forward to new horizons, choosing a new name for the journey, the more English sounding Nora Moon, informing her friend, “No one from Korea wins a Nobel Prize for Literature.”  Of course, at that time no Canadian had received one either, rectified by short story writer Alice Munro winning the coveted prize in 2013.   

The film jumps ahead twelve years to Nora as a young adult living in New York City, where most of the film takes place.  Somewhat out of the blue, Nora (American actress Greta Lee) and Hae-sung (German-South Korean actor Teo Too) connect over Skype calls, with its familiar ringtone and inexplicable freeze-ups, while checking their wall of postings on Facebook, where it’s been over a decade since they’ve had any contact, as initially he couldn’t find her because she’d taken the Western name of Nora.  He’s served his mandatory military service and is now a student while she’s embarking on a career as a writer, acknowledging that she only speaks Korean with her mother and Hae-sung, so it’s a part of her that’s underutilized, but everpresent, an intrinsic part of who she is.  While many may commonly associate with these nostalgic social media connections, it may come as no surprise that watching people on their phones and their computers is not what anyone would call a good time, and using it as a vehicle to carry the narrative action is hardly cinematic.  Though it’s completely understandable, especially considering our overreliance on technology today, many may feel not just a lull, but an emotional void at having to watch this play out onscreen in a movie theater, wondering if this is what it has come to in movies today.  While there is an obvious connection between them, it’s also clear they’ve chosen substantially different paths, where he’s seen drinking heavily with friends, downing shots of soju, complaining endlessly about his sorry love life, wanting to learn Mandarin while pursuing a career in mechanical engineering, while she has amusingly shifted her goals to winning a Pulitzer, and later a Tony, as her goals become more provincial.  After speaking to one another at all hours of the day and night, always in a tone of quiet reserve, without a trace of confrontation, where politeness and remaining as inconspicuous as possible appears to be a key aspect of Korean culture, Nora makes a surprising choice, abruptly breaking away from the calls, complaining that she’s losing her focus, as the calls have caused her to stop writing.  Pursuing her own career comes with a price, as she’s forced to shut down a part of her past in order to facilitate her future, recommending that he watch Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004), a film about erasing past lovers from your memory (which we see him watch).  Escaping instead to a writing retreat in Montauk (where the lovers meet after the memory wash in the Gondry film), she’s the first person to arrive, so gets the best choice of rooms, striking up a conversation with Arthur, John Magaro from Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow (2019) and Showing Up (2022), and before that David Chase’s Not Fade Away (2012), appropriately enough the last to arrive, yet his affable and easy-going nature is a counterpoint to her more ambitiously high-strung temperament.  As fate would have it, Nora explains to him the concept of In-yun, a fairly commonplace phrase in Korea, which roughly means destiny or fate, supposedly connected to the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, revealing how fate brings two people together based on countless connections throughout their many previous lifetimes, though she jokes that it’s a classic pick-up line.  Apparently the connection works, as Nora and Arthur are married and living in the East Village of New York, where he has a successful book release while she’s seen in rehearsals workshopping Song’s actual play, Endlings, a reflection of the interplay between narrative and identity.  While the director never shows it onscreen, each of these abrupt exits has a devastating effect on Hae-sung, who obviously spent a great deal of time and energy trying to find her after all these years, but his disappointment is only hinted at through his remorseful drinking sessions, where he is subjected to merciless ridicule from his buddies.  It’s a curious choice, as his vulnerable persona is so much more interesting, as there’s a lot to like, showing substantial humility and emotional depth, where the film is just as much about his loneliness and longing for someone, but Song instead focuses her attention on the more self-centered Nora, who has all the advantages, always thinking of herself first, leading a life of American privilege that borders on arrogance, with both men exhibiting far more self-reflection and sympathy, while she’s simply a much less compelling figure, hardened and more impenetrable, even bossy, necessities perhaps in adapting to her New York surroundings.      

While the Charlotte Wells film Aftersun (2022) revisits the past searching for missing clues in trying to figure out what went wrong, this film scours memories in search of what could have been, as Nora and Hae-sung promised to visit each other, but never did.  Jumping ahead another twelve years, Nora is a successful New York playwright living with Arthur in what appears to be a symbiotic relationship, while Hae-sung can be seen planning a weeklong trip to New York, where his friends needle him about the stormy weather forecast, as he’ll be arriving in a downpour of rain.  While Nora has moved on with her life, it’s clear Hae-sung still has an obvious affection for her, clinging to a distant memory, yet there’s something unspoken between them, which this film would have you believe is In-yun, yet neither one is Buddhist or in any way remotely religious, so this discussion is not organic to the characters, feeling more like a writing exercise.  Yet what this film does well is showcase how easily one can assimilate into a different culture, learn a different language, even master the art of writing in that language, yet it’s harder still to acknowledge how one actually feels, carefully dissected in a scene anticipating Hae-sung’s arrival to New York, Past Lives Movie Clip - When Is He Leaving? (2023) YouTube (1:32).  When the two finally meet on the streets of New York, there are long stretches of awkward silences as they stroll past the Brooklyn Bridge and ride a ferry encircling the Statue of Liberty taking selfies, but as Arthur predicted, he has clearly come to see her.  While she recognizes this, her feelings are less clear, immersed in a kind of homesickness, longing for something that may no longer exist, yet it’s connected to a language and culture she left long ago, something she doesn’t share with her husband, yet is the essence of who she is, becoming a study of cultural displacement and transformation, as she feels like a changed person when she speaks Korean, completely different than when she speaks English.  Looking backwards and forward at the same time, this is less about the longing for someone you left behind, and more about that part of yourself you left behind with them, discovering there are no easy answers, yet the loneliness is acute, reflected in Hae-sung’s solitary existence stuck in a hotel room during the first few days of his trip.  Perhaps the most exasperating sequence takes place at that aforementioned bar in the wee hours of the morning, as Arthur has joined Nora and Hae-sung for a conversation that almost completely excludes him, speaking only in Korean, with the camera never finding him, as if he doesn’t exit.  The way this sequence is shot is intentionally alienating and disturbing, as the director is choosing to avoid her American connection and instead focus entirely on this Korean relationship, accentuating what both left behind.  Song frames the story where the two men are not pitted against one another, but exist in their own light, with Hae-sung finally acknowledging at one point, “I didn’t think it would hurt so much to like your husband.”  Arthur, to his credit, has been completely supportive of this longtime reunion, realizing it will make his wife happy to reconnect with something he can never be a part of, with his magnanimity defining the breadth of what they do have together, a loving bond, where trust is an inevitable aspect of that.  Still, the way it’s filmed, without offering any translations to her husband, seems particularly rude and places Nora in a less sympathetic light.  Part of what’s so compelling here is that Hae-sung never really gets over that childhood connection, that first love, which seems to have a power of its own.  Clearly, at least to the audience, they have so much more in common, and their soulful conversations are much more intense, so many may feel a tug at the heartstrings when he reveals that for him Nora is someone who leaves, but with Arthur, a fellow writer who feels like a safer choice, she is the one who stays.  Is this the right decision?  The same could be asked at the end of CASABLANCA (1942), or that devastating finale of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (1964).  None of the scenes on the streets of New York feature natural sounds, with the audio done in the studio, while also exhibiting no spontaneity whatsoever, as it is all clearly choreographed and staged, so there is a lack of naturalism in the film, yet the indie music by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen from the Brooklyn rock band Grizzly Bear is outstanding, providing needed texture.  Despite all the critical acclaim, however, this lacks the emotional urgency of much better films on the subject of migration, culture shock, alienation, and a changing identity, namely Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul) (2022), Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2002), Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile (Ke tu qiu hen) (1990), and most especially Peter Chan’s Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Tian mi mi) (1997), the latter two both starring the incomparable Maggie Cheung.