Celine Song Knows How to Direct Dakota Johnson
My 'Materialists' review!
Hi friends~
Just to be clear: There are no major plot spoilers ahead.
On Tuesday night, I scored a front-row seat to Materialists, the hotly anticipated romantic dramedy starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans.
The buzz around the film is potent. Its boutique-chic studio, A24, has done a bang-up job of spreading the word on social media and leveraging the triple-threat charisma of the cast. They’ve hosted numerous advance screenings like the one that I attended, rolling out the red carpet for the fans and making them feel like they belong to a cool movie club. This is smart strategy! When I walked into San Francisco’s Kabuki 8 theater with three friends, we encountered abundant displays of fan service: Free drinks with cheeky names like “The Complete Package.” Free Sour Patch Kids, as sweet and acidic as Celine Song’s dialogue. A studio marketer approached us and whipped out her phone, asking, “Can I take your picture? For A24.”
We stood in front of a cardboard Materialists poster and smiled dutifully for the camera.
“What’s A24?” asked Jean, my pal and plus-one.
“The HBO of indie film!” I replied with nerdy enthusiasm, sounding like Seth Rogen in The Studio.
We entered a large screening room. Every single seat was taken, except for the ones in the first row. Which is how we ended up thisclose to Pedro Pascal’s giant head.
“I’m afraid you might go into labor,” I told another friend, who is eight months pregnant.
As the room darkened and the opening credits began, the audience fell into a collective trance. I opened my notebook and started jotting things down, mostly the funny and observant banter penned by Celine Song, the film’s writer and director. Looking back at my notes, my handwriting is painfully illegible. I struggled to keep the pace of the verbal repartee; that’s how good Song is. While her lens lingers and yearns, fixating upon the leads’ faces to an indulgent degree (hey, I’m not complaining), her script zips along at breakneck speed, unleashing zingers and pearls of wisdom with the rat-a-tat rhythms of Nora Ephron, to whom Song pays homage.
Like Ephron’s wry, open-hearted Manhattan love stories, Materialists spotlights an urbane, sensible woman as she toggles between duty and desire, practicality and sentiment. Johnson plays Lucy, a high-end matchmaker who tries to recruit private-equity hunk Harry (Pascal) as a client, but winds up dating him instead. Harry, she says, is a “unicorn”: He’s filthy rich, ridiculously attractive, smart, suave, well-dressed, and most important, very tall. He owns a swank Tribeca penthouse. He checks off all the right boxes.
When John (Evans) reenters Lucy’s luxe life, things get complicated. The struggling actor picks up shifts as a cater-waiter to pay the bills. He lives in a walkup apartment with two gross roommates, one of whom leaves a used condom on the floor. In one clever You’ve Got Mail reference, Song plays Harry Nilsson’s “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City” over scenes contrasting John and Harry’s class differences. When John takes a long, self-loathing look at himself in the bathroom mirror, the tune becomes a dark joke; when Lucy basks in the serenity of penthouse living, she looks like a grownup making good choices. She believes that marriage is, above all, a business transaction. Romantic love? Why, that’s for fools.
John and Lucy dated five years before calling it quits. They fought over money constantly. Neither was born rich, and Lucy hungered for a financial stability that she and John could not achieve together. The hustle to make moneyed matches for her clients (and herself), and escape her humble beginnings, has made her cold, calculating and cynical.
Materialists contains, ahem, many surprises (you’ll see), but for me, the biggest is Johnson. She lights up the screen and manages to pull focus from Pascal and Evans — no easy feat! She looks fabulous in clothes. Her character earns an annual salary of $80,000, just enough to make ends meet in New York, but has mastered the quiet-luxury dress code of appearing wealthier than one actually is. (Wear black. Rinse. Repeat.) Unlike her mom, Melanie Griffith, Johnson exudes chilly detachment in her roles, and it can be off-putting. Here, though, it works wonders, rendering her character's emotional journey all the more poignant and powerful.
Walking out of the theater, my pregnant friend commented on Johnson’s chilliness. Is she even capable of falling in love … in a movie?
The drama lies within that question. Song slowly defrosts her leading lady and reveals the warm-blooded artist underneath the cool facade. The filmmaker clearly likes actors and knows how to maximize their strengths and weaknesses. That said, Materialists is not nearly as “perfect” as Pascal’s finance heir. Characters give too many speeches, some maudlin and cringey. At times, Evans isn’t properly lit. (Someone get Streisand’s DP!)
In a sense, Materialists is Song’s sleek sequel to Past Lives, the Oscar-nominated gem that put her on the map. She seems to have had more fun on this one, dropping delightful Easter Eggs for You’ve Got Mail lovers. Spot the references to a pivotal Frank Navasky scene, and daisies, “the friendliest flower.”
Materialists will be released in theaters on Friday.
END CREDITS
Besides killing it on the acting front, Dakota Johnson is an absolute HOOT on a press tour. Stars like her keep celebrity meme machine Evan Ross Katz in business. In the latest episode of Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast, she shared a bizarre dream involving Matty Healy transforming into an asparagus.
The brilliant
has compiled “A Smutty Summer Reading List” in response to Evie magazine’s Anti-Smut campaign.RIP to Ananda Lewis, the coolest MTV VJ of all time, and musical genius Brian Wilson, whose sublime songwriting existed on a higher plane. I think of him whenever I’m driving on Highway 1, and a bend in the road reveals the most heavenly view of Stinson Beach. At that moment, I always play “Good Vibrations,” but today, I’ll sign off with this beauty:
Warmly,
Erin
Great movie tip, Erin!
Will be SPRINTING to the theater! Great review—have been keeping an eye out for what you had to say about it.