Materialists | Film Review
Celine Songs balances the theatrical and the real, the mainstream and arthouse, the glamour and the ruggedness in her follow-up to Past Lives.
Sometimes, the audience for a film you have been eagerly anticipating can make you question whether or not you still want to see it. I was there to witness the follow-up to Past Lives, a film that, to me, captured the dialogue-heavy, authentic, and deeply personal romance of films such as the Before trilogy. Yet I found myself surrounded by women in their late 20s and early 30s, eagerly anticipating two hours of drooling over man-of-the-hour Pedro Pascal playing a single multi-millionaire pawned over by women. Sat, enduring a string of trailers for run-of-the-mill, generic romcoms, I began to question my decision. Was I about to suffer through two hours of fodder for the Pascal-fanciers? Had I elevated Song’s status as an indie darling prematurely?
Fortunately, what Celine Song managed to deliver with Materialists was something I didn’t think was possible: not only did it manage to give both myself and the people around me exactly what we had expected as we bought our tickets, it managed to keep a sold-out screening in a multiplex cinema quiet and off of their phones for a full two hours.
If the trailers managed to make me feel somewhat nervous about what I had got myself in for, then the opening 10 minutes didn’t do much to put me at ease. In what I consider to be one of the most terrifying openings in cinema history, there is a group of designer-clad screaming women swiftly followed by a group of drunk people bouncing to ‘Sweet Caroline’ at a wedding. However, as the plot unravelled, I found that rather than pandering to the homogenous mass and losing the heart and authenticity Song established during her phenomenal debut Past Lives, Celine Song uses her incredible ear for dialogue and talent for depicting the authenticity of life to focus her lens on a different demographic. I felt uncomfortable watching the drunk people belting out Neil Diamond at the wedding, because that is exactly how I feel when I see the same thing on display at every wedding I have ever been to.
So, rather than Song deserting the tenderness of her previous film in exchange for the mass-produced genre flick it was marketed as in many parts, the film offers a gentle critique of the audience of these sorts of generic romantic comedies. Gentle in the sense that this critique was not berating the audience from the “I’m better than you” mantle often occupied by the arthouse crowd, it is aware of the audience that it appeals to and uses this to its advantage: blending the familiar ebbs and flows of the conventional landfill rom-coms with the more theatrical, arthouse moments that ask the audience to pause and reflect on not just what is happening within the film, but within the wider world.
Gentle in the sense that this critique is not reserved for the section of the audience that are here to see the stars of the screen, but also of those who consider themselves above that, those (like myself) who went into the film feeling slightly scared that Song would be “deserting her roots” established in Past Lives for a big pay day. Central to the film’s plot, the story of a matchmaker who herself seeks romance, is the idea that as people we are quick to dismiss one another based on surface-level attraction, dismiss one another based on the headline figures: weight, height, upbringing, wealth; Song uses this as an allegory to make the pretentious arthouse crowd flocking to watch the film question themselves for judging the film on its trailer and its billing. We are quick to dismiss things in the modern age, feeling ourselves, in one way or another, too important to waste our time on something that isn’t exactly right, and in the process, potentially miss out on a good time.
The film blends its moments of pop culture with a strong independent spirit in a manner that leaves both sides of the divide questioning whether they are, in fact, the ones with the problem; a film that makes a valid case for the fact that you are allowed to have both the fun, mass appeal of a genre and the artistic integrity of the quiet reflective independent cinema. While for the most part it plays both sides fairly well, at times its messaging can come across as slightly heavy-handed, and audiences can be left with whiplash jumping between the two worlds.
The world seemed to lose its mind over Sean Baker’s Anora, a screwball comedy for the modern age, that blended rawness and authenticity with the glossy appeal, but I see Materialists as much more deserving of this praise. Where Baker’s world seemed polished and neon-clad in a way that slowly but surely, while entertaining, tested the limits of how far you can suspend your disbelief, Song’s Materialists, while taking place in a world I have never inhabited, feels like one that you can truly buy into for the film’s duration. These characters are real people, not just caricatures, and while the film is full of funny moments, the narrative strays from using characters solely as set pieces. We are watching Celine Song reflect the world we live in back to us, which is refreshing to see with such a big-name cast, and despite feeling like Charlie Day would have perhaps nailed the role of a failing actor living on the edge of squalor slightly better than Chris Evans: I did forget (for the most part) about who it was that was bringing these characters to life.
Much like the characters in this film, Celine Song knows how to play the game. She carefully balanced two worlds which seemed incompatible - just as she did, to an extent, in Past Lives. However, where Past Lives felt completely authentic, there are moments within this film that feel slightly too sanitised: in Hollywood, even imperfections are perfect. That said, there is something in this film for all of us, regardless of why you sat down to watch it. We are more similar than we think, and we can all find joy, find love, if we are open to letting it in. By no means is the film perfect, and in some ways the whole point of the film is that neither it nor we has to be. Now, it’s all down to the local chain cocktail bar to get a 2-4-1 on Cosmos before happy hour finishes: I’m buying, girlies.