Written and directed by Deline Song, Materialists is the follow-up to the melancholic romance Past Lives, her impressive feature debut that was nominated for the best picture and original screenplay Oscars.
My Oscar Book:
“We’re not just here to be in love and beautiful and get to be in a rom-com,” says Song. “We’re also going to take this opportunity to talk about something. Because that’s the power of the genre. Our favorite rom-coms are the ones where we get to start a conversation about something.”
In the film, Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a professional matchmaker in New York City, helping affluent clients fulfill their impossible criteria of looks, occupation, education, income, background, lifestyle and anything else that impacts prospective partner’s value in the marketplace.
When Lucy meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), a tall, handsome, wealthy private equity manager, she tries to wrangle him as possible match the female clients who would want him. But he plans to pursue Lucy in a series of expensive dinners.
Meanwhile, Lucy has also reconnected with John (Chris Evans), a former boyfriend, a struggling actor working as a cater waiter years after they broke up. Lucy is torn between the cynicism and practicality of her job and yearning romanticism.
“They’re not good,” Johnson, 35, says. “A lot of what I read these days is void of soul and heart. And Celine is all soul and heart. I really love a rom-com if I can connect to the people in it. I’ve found it hard to connect to the people in some of the ones that I’ve been offered.”
What made “Materialists” feel different?
“The complexities of all of the characters,” Johnson says. “The paradox of everyone being confused about what the f— they’re supposed to do with their hearts. What’s the right move? I found that very honest and so relatable.”
Around 10 years ago, Song worked for a professional matchmaking service for six months, a client-facing job. There she found the interactions with people to be bracing in their candor and vulnerability, as well as the ways in which the work demanded management of people’s feelings of desirability or lovability, as well as rejection or worthlessness.
“To a matchmaker, everybody’s honest about what they’re looking for,” says Song, 36, who’s married to “Challengers” and “Queer” screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes. “At that time, I just knew I’m going to write something about it.
People online have commented on Lucy’s unusual drinks. More specifically, a drink that is placed in front of her before by someone who already knows that her preferred beverage was once Coke and beer, with space in a glass to pour the two together.
All I did was googled ‘weird drinks’
“This was a drink that is so strange you can’t guess,” explains Song. “Only somebody who knows you well, who knew you in college, who knew you when you were at your heart your pure self, knows your drink order. All I did was I Googled ‘weird drinks.’”
Though the drink is popular in Germany, Johnson notes, “It’s just very effervescent and kind of gross. Not for me.”
Song and Johnson have formed a bond, and by the time they were shooting, Song could communicate ideas with just a look or a gesture rather than explanation.
Johnson has the savvy of someone who has spent her entire life in proximity to the spotlight–her parents are actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson–and has now been working since “The Social Network” in 2010. The two femmes share a casual, relaxed energy.
Will Johnson stick to indie films of the scale of Materialists, or projects produced by her company TeaTime Pictures, such as 2023’s “Daddio” or the upcoming “Splitsville,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Fest?
She feels pressured to explain why Madame Web failed so miserably.
“A lot of creative decisions are made by committee, or by people who don’t have a creative bone in their body. It’s really hard to make art or something entertaining that way. Unfortunately, with Madame Web, it started out as something and turned into something else. I was just sort of along for the ride, but that happens. Bigger-budget movies fail all the time.
“I don’t have a Band-Aid over it,” she adds. “There’s no part of me that’s like, ‘Oh, I’ll never do that again’ to anything. I’ve done even tiny movies that didn’t do well. Who cares?”
Future Oriented Actor
She is involved in several projects, including one to be helmed by the legendary comedian-director Elaine May, who’s 93, Johnson hopes it could be shooting in the fall.
“Sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh, I know how to fix it,’ or I know what to do, I want to help,” says Johnson. “And there’s some things where I have to just not say things. Sometimes I love just showing up, especially on our movie, it was just fun for me to only be acting. Because I was in so much, I felt like I was in such good hands, I could just relax into that role.”
The film uses a fable-like framing story about two prehistoric cave dwellers who may very well be the first married couple.
“To me, the whole movie is in those pieces,” says Song. “All of what we are living through is also going to be ancient too. We know that certain stone tools were passed over to the other, but we do not know about the flowers that were exchanged. There are some things like sentiment and feeling and love that are intangible and ephemeral. There’s real and tangible and material record of stone tools being traded. But what passed between them in their heart is not; it’s not on record.”
“Materialists” attempts to capture the specifics of cultural moment, calculating cost-benefit analysis against a perceived ticking clock.
“At present, the dating world because of social media is so different–everything is aspirational,” says Johnson. “You want to live the life that all other people have on your phone, thinking that that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. It looks good, but it’s not authentic because it’s manufactured, it’s filtered. Everything that a woman or a man is looking for in a partner, when they get to a certain age, it’s all material things. It’s height, income, hair, body, physique. It’s things that have nothing to do with soul connection.”
Unafraid to grapple with tough conversations and internal crises, Materialists exudes a chic glamour as it interrogates the tough choices, motivations and consequences of modern romance.
Lucy and Harry go to see John perform in off-Broadway production of Song’s play “Tom & Eliza.” Afterwards, John says something dismissive about Lucy’s work as matchmaker and she sarcastically retorts that it’s just “girl s—.”
This line was Song’s purposeful rebuke of the dismissive attitudes toward writing about love.
“I often experience general sentiment that love as a topic of conversation is dismissible as unserious, unimportant, ‘lighter fare,’ ‘girl s—,’” says Song. “People call romantic films ‘chick flicks’ as a way to diminish them, which I find unspeakably sad, for the way it excludes ‘serious people’ from the realm of romance and love.
“I believe that love is the greatest mystery in everyone’s lives, and therefore it is one of the most important themes in cinema. Love is the one drama we all experience, and it deserves the utmost respect.”
