Celine Song announced her arrival as the writer and director of the highly acclaimed Past Lives, putting her in the enviable but fraught position of selecting a suitable follow-up project. Materialists finds Song still firmly ensconced in the relationship foibles of New Yorkers, but with far more prominent actors. If you liked the quiet, contemplative musings of Past Lives, you’ve come to the right place, but anyone looking for a typical rom-com is best to move along.
Buy Materialists Blu-rayDakota Johnson leads the cast as a professional matchmaker named Lucy, who has reduced men down to their marketable qualities, prioritizing ideal measurements in height, wealth, education, and social standing to give her female clients the best shot at an ideal match. Notice that love isn’t part of the formula, because she’s so jaded that she believes wealth and standing will sustain her clients well after any passion fizzles out.
Lucy initially moved to the city with her struggling actor boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), before realizing his broke ass wasn’t an ideal match for her aspirations. Now living alone and seemingly consumed by her job, but still crossing paths with John at times, she’s thrown for a loop when she encounters a perfect man at the wedding of one of her satisfied customers. Labelled a “unicorn” in the parlance of her workplace due to his top-tier ranking in all of the important categories, Harry (Pedro Pascal) seems too good to be true, especially when he develops a genuine interest in pursuing a long-term relationship with Lucy.
Poor Dakota Johnson, forced to choose between Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal. The casting of beautiful celebrities is the most unrealistic thing in the movie, but all three came to work and prove that they’re true thespians, not just pretty faces. Johnson in particular impresses, not airily drifting through her role as she does quite often, but actually delivering some wrought emotion to Song’s insightful scripted lines. The boys both contribute standout scenes, including Pascal’s measured approach to the reveal of a chink in his armor, but Johnson carries the film from start to finish.
While Song meant to emulate a rom-com, there’s little comedy here, with the character interactions more in line with those in Richard Linklater’s brooding Before Trilogy than the breezy shenanigans of movies like Working Girl or You’ve Got Mail. There are shades of When Harry Met Sally, primarily noticed when client confessionals are interspersed throughout the film, but the film is inevitably most like Past Lives in overall tone. Song is locked on with fully formed, intelligent characters who take the time to truly connect with each other in spellbinding interactions given ample space to breathe, a rarity in today’s superficial marketplace that has boiled down films to matchmaker-like commodities.
The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with available Dolby Atmos sound. Song chose to shoot on 35 mm film to evoke classic rom-coms of the ‘90s, giving the project a hazy, grainy look somewhat incongruous to its slick, present-day NYC setting. The characters are “materialists” after all, not nostalgists. While it definitely looks like a 90s film, the sound is entirely modern, with the spatial audio of the Big Apple expertly transferred to the living room.
The disc features a lengthy featurette on the making of the film, chock full of fascinating tidbits such as Song’s past lives as both a professional matchmaker and a playwright, both of which clearly informed her work here. There’s also a shorter feature on the soundtrack by Japanese Breakfast, with frontwoman Michelle Zauner and bandmate Craig Hendrix getting so far into the studio weeds about their process that it feels longer than the primary feature. Good idea in theory, not so much in practice this time around.
Although I’m unfamiliar with A24’s track record regarding disc packaging, this particular effort is an obvious standout. In lieu of the standard plastic case, the product arrives in a cardboard gatefold case housed in a slipcase, with a plastic tray for the disc and six bonus photo cards featuring behind-the-scenes pics from the shoot printed on sturdy matte cardstock. “Eco friendly” may be a dirty term in 2025, but this package design keeps the plastic to a minimum while also seeming far more premium and special than a typical Blu-ray release, even without a booklet.
