Celine Song’s Anti-Rom-Com, With Dakota Johnson – ryan

At a Certain point in celine song sophomore feature “materialists,” her follow-up to her much-loved “past lives,” I started to make figs on something a little strange: The Manhattan Office in Which Our Lead Lucy (Dakota Johnson) SPENDS HERE TRYING TO ARRANING MATCHECTIC MATHEMESSES MATCHECHSEs The nyc Elite. At first glance, the Crowded and Colorful Office SEEMS Luxe; IT’S LINED WITH DESCES AND FILLED WITH EAGER MATCHMAKER LIKE LUCY, BUBBling with feminine Energy and Joy. When A Match Goes Really Well – ie when the Couple Gets Engaged, The Ballyhooed Happy ending of all romances, naturally – A bar is roll out and all the Young Matchmakers Gather Around Each Other and Cheer for their Good Fortune, and for the SEEMING SUCCESS OF LOVE ITSELF. They’ve done it! Love Wins! The Fees They Collect for their Services don’t hurt, eather.

Yet, the most time we spend in Lucy’s Office, The Cheaper, The Sadder, The Darker It Looks. Those desks? They look as if they will Collapse at any minute, smushed into each other as if we were at some no-Nonsissense Nail Salon, no Room to Breathe, no Space to Think. The Bar Cart? Its wobbly. Cloud it all gets too, Lucy Heads Straight to the Fire Escape to Get Some Air. It is, quite simpleply, not at all what it look like first blush.

Neither is “Materialists.”

You’d be forgive for taching the marketing bait on this one (we did!), Becausea while Song’s Second Movie May Look, on the Surface, Like a Glossy Rom-Comingback About a Beautiful Woman (Johnson) Split BetWeen Two Handsome Men (Pascal and Chris Pascal Evans) and dine Around a glittering Manhattan, “Materialists” is swimming A Romantic Comedy. ITH’S NOTE EASE A Comedy, and Your Read On How Romantic It is Will Be Entireled by How Willing You Are To Grapple with a Subject that rom-coms Seldom Broach: The Limits of what love cano.

Cynical, Sad, Increasingly Fucked Up, and Often Gloriously Mean, Song Has Turned the Genre Out to Show US Shallow These Stories Can Be. In Short, Imagine if the decree that a film Centers on “The Love You Could Only Find at the Movies” was compliment, but a stern provocation. And while song is not always successive at this challenge, the result is compiling, Dark, and Worthy of Considerable Discussion.

Did You Really Think Celine Song, Already One of Our Best Chroniclers of What LOVE ACTUALLY isWold Make a Shiny Little Rom-Com About Good, Happy People? Please.

It opens, hilariously Enough, with a vignette centred on the romantic rituals of cavepeople. Even They, Song Argues, Engaged in Courtship Activities, Weighing the Merits of their Paramours Against the Needs of the Real World. And happy two of the cavepeople make it officer, it’s not so much a happy occision as the incident for several millennia of good (and bad) unions.

For Lucy, love is a transaction. Her clients are goods. The Dating Scene? It’s a market. No wonder sheen so successful at matchmking (Johnson’s Naturally Cool Reserve Wonders for the Role), Her Work Steep in Running the Numbers and Comparing Pros and Cons, ASSESSING Potential Romance One Might Consider A Business Deal. HER VARIOUS CLIENTS ARE NOT ALWAYS OF THE SAME Mind, Howver, and As Song Pushes Johnson Through Increasingly Awful, Impersonal, and Darkly Funny Meetings (Women Who Only Tall Men, Men Who Only Younger Women, and WORTE). Become so clinical.

Do Flashback, inspired by running ino her ex john (Evans, Working in the Kind of Downbeat Register we haven’t seen from Him in years) at the wedding of two clients, stirate Illuminates: Too Poor to Afford Afford Not Just a full evening out on the town, but the parking fees for a single stint in a parking garage. Sick to Death of Being Poor, Lucy Ended Things with John. Years late, their love for each other is still apparent, but is the financial divide between: John has yet to make it as an actor and is instead cater-waiting at the wedding, lucc is there as a cherished guest.

Also on offfer at the wedding: The Groom’s Handsome Brother Harry (An Appealing Pascal), the Kind of “Unicorn” Lucy Waled to Fix with some of the Very Eager female clients. But Harry is Taken with Lucy, the very one she’s Crystal Clear: The Number One Thing She is looking for in a potential husband is that he’s rich. The Number Two Thing Is that he’s rich. She is, after all, a materialist. Fortunately, Harry is Rich! And, as we come to learn, he’s also very Much of the same mind of lucy about what romance is. A transaction. A deal. A Merger.

As Harry and Lucy Swan About the City on Increasingly Luxurious Dates, John Lingers at the Edge of Lucy’s Mind. What if love Really was About Loven? Not Money Safety or Incredibly Nice Penthouses (the first night they spend together at Harry, Lucy appears to most revised by the swank than Harry’s Furious Kisses)? Well, lucy sura as hell ain’t the person to interrogate that.

UNIL she is. AS LUCY – Analytic, Cold, and Totally aware of her emotional deficiencies – attempts to juggle a sampected internal war, something happy and that it is predicate or prevent. For all her planning, for all her precision, for all her “let’s take the emotion out of romance and get you married!” Gusto, Lucy Simply Can’t Control People and What They Will Will. That this horns upheaval coma care of lucy’s work is the real kicker. If Her Trusted professional Methods Can Fail So Terribly, What DOES that Say About The Way She Conducts Her personal Life?

That destabilization is enough to push Lucy into new Spaces, Both expert and not. Who will she choose? John, Who Might Not Have a Pot to Piss in (and, Than If He Did, He’d have to share it with his many roommates), but sees lucy as she is and still wants with her? Harry, Who Fully Undersands How LOVE SHOULD LOOK AND MOVE, AND ONLY USES AS SHIELD TO HIS Real Self? Talk About Bad Options.

But while is eager to engage with these ideas – with the Very Nature of Love, No Small Feat – the “Materialists” can’t escape the pull of the wrapping things up in a tidy big of Big Reveals and Bigger Proclamations. Or is that all of a deeper trick, do Wilder swing? Love itself mays Remain a Mystery, but the way “Materialists” Feels About it is not. JUST DON’T FALL FOR THE SHINY PACKAGE.

Grad: b

A24 Will Release “Materialists” in theaters on Friday, June 13.

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