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). 

Universal Language (Une Langue Universelle)

 

Québec premier François Legault

Director Matthew Rankin

Matthew Rankin as Groucho Marx in 1988

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE (Une Langue Universelle)      B                                             Canada  (89 mi)  2024  d: Matthew Rankin

We were looking for ourselves in each other.                                                                                —a line from Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (1969) that was crucial for this film’s creation according to the press notes, where Matthew Rankin also hilariously interviews himself, A Film by Matthew Rankin PRESSKIT 

Among the more original films you can see, described by the director as a “surrealist comedy” and an “autobiographical hallucination,” raising questions of identity, displacement, and cultural intersections, where anyone who can appreciate the absurdity of Guy Maddin’s MY WINNIPEG (2007) can appreciate the hilarious irreverence of this film.  Existing in a netherworld between Winnipeg, Tehran, and the social realist aesthetic of Iranian films, yet also Montreal after the 1995 Quebec referendum, when the French-speaking province attempted to break away from the rest of Canada, but  lost, refusing to let it go, still immersed in a hotbed of Québécois nationalism, exacerbating a continual dispute between Anglo and Francophone culture, so it’s hard to tell just exactly where we are at any given moment, as this appears to be more of a state of mind film, a somewhat demented adaptation of the director’s own life, where he plays the central character Matthew, a rather passive, melancholic, absurdly Kafkaesque Josef K figure who leaves the cultural comforts of Montreal for the wintry wasteland that is Winnipeg.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the entire film is filtered through the Iranian Farsi language, supposedly “in the name of friendship,” as an early title card reads, inspired by Iranian films of the 1970’s, which were largely humanistic children’s fables, with an opening dedication to a fictional Winnipeg Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, otherwise known as Kanoon (Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children & ...), a real-life Iranian entity associated with the early works of Abbas Kiarostami, an open tribute to the first installment of his famous Koker trilogy, WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE (1987), with its blending of fiction with reality/documentary, exactly as Rankin did in an early short from 2008, Self-Portrait M.Rankin YouTube (2:56), yet somehow it’s all transferred into Canada of the present, reimagined where Persian and French are the two official languages, and English is non-existent.  Something of a mishmash of recurring vignettes and set pieces, with the director acknowledging “Iranian cinema emerges from 1000 years of poetry, while Canadian cinema emerges from 40 years of discounted furniture ads,” the film is full of sight gags, deadpan Tatiesque humor, weirdly eccentric characters, like a man dressed as a Christmas tree, and plenty of wild turkeys!  Premiering in Director’s Fortnight at Cannes where it won the first ever Audience Choice Award, this breezy, light-hearted film is easy to like, shot in a beautifully grainy 16mm look from Isabelle Stachtchenko, using almost entirely non-professionals, while shot on a shoestring budget, where despite the whimsical spirit, there’s a deep sense of loneliness embedded beneath the surface.  The director was present during the screening, and he’s extremely witty in person, filled with hilarious rants and caustic observations, where he’s especially critical of the Québec film industry, believing they make dreadfully anguishing existential films that plunge us into the depths of despair and simply exist in their own soulless purgatory.  This parallel universe appears to be an uplifting remedy, supposedly drawn from the director’s own “meaningless” life, with no real main character, but several stories told in parallel, taking us into a world of omnipresent snow with a Stalinist landscape of colorless brick and concrete buildings (the director’s favorite) or highway overpasses with trucks rolling by and endless traffic noise, where somewhere in this labyrinthean maze of dead ends exists the human soul.    

Taking a page out of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses (Kuru Otlar Üstüne) (2023), the film opens under a blanket of snow with a French immersion teacher Mr. Bilodeau (Mani Soleymanlou) arriving late before berating his primary school classroom for numerous offenses, such as the noisy outbursts they were making before he arrived, “Please, would you at least have the decency to misbehave in French?,” yet when he asks what their future careers will look like in a Woody Allen Annie Hall (1977) moment, where we discover a student dressed like Groucho Marx (the director reports he did this as a child), or a budding donkey breeder, he concludes that “all of you will fail,” offering little hope for human survival before having them read a sentence on the blackboard, “We are lost forever in this world.”  That is our introductory moment into this film, where the name of the Robert H. Smith school is written in Persian lettering, a theme that continues for the duration of the film, with all the men referred to as “agha,” a Farsi term of endearment, like addressing someone as sir.  On their way home from school, two young female grade school students, Negin (Rojina Esmaeili) and her sister Nazgol (Saba Vahedyousefi), happen upon a 500 riel bill (a play on Iranian rial currency) frozen under the ice, asking a nearby man in purple earmuffs, Massoud (Pirouz Nemati), if he can help, but he steers them to a friend in a nearby turkey store to borrow an axe to chip away the ice, steadfastly deferring their requests that he go borrow the axe, since it’s his friend, but the man insists that he stay, sending them on a wild goose chase through Winnipeg’s shopping neighborhoods, named appropriately beige, brown, and grey districts, each looking eerily the same, the washed out colors blending indistinctly into the other, where it’s hard to tell the difference.  The kids are turned away at every turn, with no one offering a hint of interest, leaving them to navigate this maze of corridors and barren alleyways that all seem to lead to nowhere.  By the time they actually have success, it has grown dark outside and the riel note has already been chipped out of the ice, where the kids are thwarted in their quest, with a deceiving Massoud the likely suspect in outwitting these kids.  A continuously surprising meditation on being away from home and then being unable to find one’s way back, as nothing is remotely the same, having been transformed in our absence, this outrageously eccentric satire hits buttons we’ve never even imagined until brought to light in this outlandish manner.  The origin of this film may be the director’s early fascination with foreign films, as they spoke to him in a way that few English-language films ever had, and even traveled to Iran at one point, where the beauty of the experience was seeing the world differently, where we recognize ourselves in each other, sharing common interests, becoming a wacky, off-kilter exploration of cultural identity, where there’s even an appearance of a memorable song from the 60’s, These eyes - The Guess Who (1969) YouTube (3:58), but the object of affection here is a prized turkey!  Placing an emphasis on human connections and intercultural coexistence, a recurring motif is misdirection and random miscommunication, as characters continually seek ways to connect to each other, becoming part of a larger human collective, but when they lose that interconnectedness and sense of community, they can become lost and disoriented in a baffling mix of muddled confusion.  In a strange twist of fate, Omid (Sobhan Javadi), the son of Massoud loses his glasses, but when one of the girls retrieves them and he puts them back on near the end, the roles of Matthew and Massoud mysteriously switch, signaling how easily we misinterpret the world around us because we lack the correct perspective.     

In a parallel story of alienation and a longing for identity, we see Matthew playing a version of himself as he resigns his menial civil servant position in the Québec government to move back home to Winnipeg to visit his ailing mother.  Taking place in a giant room under a large portrait of Québec premier François Legault, a lone table sits off to the side in the corner where a government official steers Matthew away from making any criticisms of the Québec government, indicating he may make positive or neutral remarks, but nothing negative, causing him to utter with the utmost sincerity, “My time here was by far the most neutral experience of my life.”  Ironically, in a nearby cubicle, a man can be heard and occasionally seen sobbing profusely, obviously a sign of extreme unhappiness, yet the cause remains a mystery.  On the bus to Manitoba a woman passenger complains bitterly that a prized live turkey is given its own seat next to her, yet the driver informs her that this special bird has won avian beauty contests and is a paying customer.  Throughout this film various people contend they clearly supported Quebec’s right to independence in the referendum vote, where it’s likely more people say that after the vote, as if in hindsight that’s politically correct, at least in Québec, though it’s hardly an indicator of how they actually voted.  Once back in Winnipeg, Matthew is forced to idle his afternoon time away at a Tim Horton’s (Always Fresh! transformed into an Arabic teahouse with donuts) while awaiting a designated appointment with someone after work, as he’s blindsided by the discovery that his mother has moved to a different address and is now living with a total stranger that she mistakenly believes is him, no longer recognizing him anymore.  In a bemused portrait of an alternative universe, we see a series of strange and mysterious happenings, among which include a barrage of cheesy television ads from Hafez Ghamghosar (Bahram Nabatian), a singing turkey expert in a pink cowboy hat, claiming he has the best turkeys anywhere, anytime, with a look that’s right out of the VHS era of the 1970’s, a surreal glimpse into a Kleenex repository, a lavish all-hours bingo parlor, a shop that sells only birthday cakes, or a billboard bearing Justin Trudeau’s face and the slogan “a strong economy helps to prevent feelings of worthlessness.”  Yet we also follow the baffling exploits of Massoud in the purple earmuffs as a self-appointed Winnipeg tour guide, where he leads a small following who gripe their way through an endless cold and windswept journey to some of the most unglamorous and drably uninteresting sites imaginable, like tall windowless buildings, parking lots, and abandoned shopping centers, where they discover “the Great Parallel Parking Incident of 1958,” a memorial to Métis leader Louis Riel, founder of the province of Manitoba (executed by the government for his role in the North-West Rebellion), which is basically a snow pile located between a freeway and an exit ramp, a deserted shopping mall fountain with no running water, meaning “All wishes are canceled,” suggesting residents are hoping for the water to someday return, or a “Forgotten Briefcase” left behind decades ago on a bus stop bench that no one has touched, thinking the owner may still come to retrieve it, becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site and “a monument to absolute inter-human solidarity, even at its most basic and banal,” where a sense of Canadian mediocrity exists around every corner.  Written by Ila Firouzabadi (who plays a bus driver), Pirouz Nemati, and Matthew Rankin, nothing ordinary happens here, as it’s all simply imagined from the deranged mind of Rankin who clearly has a thing for movies, as this will take you on an amusement park roller coaster ride the likes of which you’ve never seen.  And in case you didn’t know it before, laughter is a universal language.