'Materialists' Is a Love Triangle Dramedy

A24 dropped the trailer for the year's buzziest romance, and naturally, I have some thoughts.

My favorite Chris with Dakota and Pedro.

Hi friends,

I loved Celine Song’s Past Lives and am excited to see her next movie, a romance dubbed Materialists, co-starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans. This week, the film’s boutique-chic studio, A24, announced a release date (June 13) and dropped an official poster and trailer oozing sophistication, sensuality and a dreamy ambiance. Clearly, they feel pretty good about Materialists and its prospects at the specialty box office. The project was initially described in the trade press as a rom-com, but from what I’ve observed dramaturgically, it skews closer to a highbrow dramedy. While the early footage depicts comic scenarios, Song tends to eschew belly laughs and feel-good formulas in favor of luxuriously pensive character studies. And she is obsessed with love triangles that center a woman wondering: What if?

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In Past Lives, the writer-director centered Greta Lee as a New Yorker struggling to decide whether to leave her loving husband for her childhood sweetheart. Lee’s character never verbalizes her inner turmoil. Instead, Song masterfully interweaves subtle actions and subtext, building up to a nail-biting finale that reminded me of the last scenes of The Bridges of Madison County, which your aunt still owns on VHS alongside her copies of Beaches, Ghost and Terms of Endearment. (All stellar picks!)

After Past Lives earned an Oscar nod for Best Picture last year, Song quickly gathered funding to make Materialists with three big names attached. She cast Johnson as Lucy, a matchmaker serving high-end clientele in New York City, and shrewdly selected Pascal, an internet boyfriend, to play a dreamboat millionaire named Randy. (Yes: Randy!) Completing the triangle, Evans (the best Chris) portrays John, a scruffy actor who waits tables to pay the rent. He and Lucy used to date before she dumped him for the luxe life; they reconnect when he serves her and Randy at a wedding. Check out the trailer:

I have a few thoughts:

• First of all, NICE CUT. We get a strong sense of the stakes and how Lucy could lose her credibility — and her elite matchmaking business — if she were to choose the penniless artist over the rich guy.

• The moment where Lucy takes a smoke break and finds John standing by a catering truck: That’s the stuff. “I missed you,” she says, to which he goes, “Yeah, you don’t even remember my face.” Then she holds up her cigarette and traces the outline of his jaw in the night air as he stares at her with the fire-and-ice intensity of Alec Baldwin circa The Hunt for Red October, which your dad owned on VHS.

• Lucy has been responsible for nine marriages. Only NINE? I would add a “0” to that number. Go big or go home.

• “I’m turning 48 and I think I need to meet someone more grown,” a finance bachelor tells Lucy, who replies, “I have a really beautiful client. She’s 31.” His response: “I wasn’t really thinking thirties.” Typical. This was a missed opportunity for Leo “I Get Older, They Stay the Same Age” DiCaprio to make an uncredited cameo. CC: Justin Theroux.

• John says to Lucy, “When I see your face, I see wrinkles and children that look like you.” His sentiment is awkwardly worded, yet deeply felt. He seems unaware that Lucy uses Botox, and should they have a future together, her forehead will remain wrinkle-free.

• New York is a city where status means everything. Your job is often your identity, your value to someone else, your ticket to the right restaurants, parties and zip codes. It is not uncommon to meet a new person and for them to ask: “What do you do?” Lots of ambitious, wealthy men collect women as though they’re trophies, and a blind date can feel like an interview — that’s the world in which Lucy operates. Sure, it’s glamorous, and triple-VIP, but does it have a soul? Is Lucy not exhausted by catering to a status-conscious milieu?

Alright! I know how I’d write the ending. (Predictably, Lucy picks John.) But Celine Song being Celine Song, we can expect the unexpected. Maybe Lucy ends up with Pedro Pascal. Or maybe, in a modern twist, she ends up solo. Whatever happens, it’ll be interesting.

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END CREDITS

• Simone Ashley brings her wonderful Eldest Daughter energy to the rom-com Picture This, now streaming via Amazon Prime Video. An imperfect but enjoyable comfort watch.

• Kate Hudson shines in Running Point, “the Netflix comedy that I wanted but never knew I needed,” I wrote in a March Madness-themed Ministry of Pop Culture dispatch. As Isla Gordon, the president of the fictional Los Angeles Waves, Hudson embodies a funny, flawed, flawlessly dressed sort of Girlboss. She grows into her power while wearing killer heels, but she also walks into a glass door. (I laughed.)

• I devoured every episode of “With Love, Meghan,” also on Netflix. It’s soothing and tranquil, like the Montecito coast. Meghan Markle Sussex channels Julia Child as she attempts to cook up complicated dishes, learning as she goes along. Excellent cameos by California chefs Roy Choi, Ramon Valezquez and Alice Waters.

• Pride and Prejudice (Keira’s Version) will return to theaters for its 20th anniversary on April 20 and April 23. “The hand flex seen ’round the world can now be viewed on the big screen once more,” writes Indiewire’s Samantha Bergeson. (I shall be seated.) (Hopefully not next to Lady Catherine de Bourgh.)

Thanks for reading! See you next time.

“Most ardently,”

Erin