Tag: Celine Song

MATERIALISTS – Review

Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal in Celine Song’s MATERIALISTS. Photo credit: Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of A24

Does money matter in matters of love? Well, historically it has but if that is all that matters, then there is a problem. Dakota Johnson plays a modern matchmaker in New York City, working for a company that caters to affluent clients, in director/writer Celine Song’s in the romantic comedy MATERIALISTS. But MATERIALISTS is no typical rom-com but a smart, thought-provoking social commentary on love and materialism. Celine Song’s previous film, PAST LIVES, was a drama that thoughtfully and realistically explored how cultural differences and time impact romance, and the director turns that same insightful, honest style to a look at love and money through a more humorous but still thinking lens.

MATERIALISTS actually opens with a Stone Age man bringing flowers and useful tools to woo the cave woman of his dreams, an early materialist, but quickly flashes forward to present-day New York City, where matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is strolling down the street when she spots a nice-looking, prosperous looking young man. She asks if he is single, and then gives him her business card, just in case he’s looking for the services of a high-end matchmaker.

He takes the card. This direct approach tactic works in part because Lucy is herself young and beautiful, but Lucy in not looking for love herself. In fact, she tells a co-worker that she is planning to stay single and “die alone” (a phrase we hear frequently throughout this film, and only an extremely rich man might tempt her to change her mind, revealing a hard-eyed materialist bent.

There is a lot of this materialist bent among her clients, who turn to this service to find candidates who match their criteria before taking a chance on falling in love. Lucy is successful at her job in part because she understands this and gently guides them to potential matches. Her job involves recruiting new clients like in that first scene, matching client’s backgrounds and interests, but also serving as a kind of therapist guiding them towards marriage. When a matchmaker at her firm, Adore, makes a match that results in marriage, the whole office celebrates the win.

Lucy has just made such as match, and of course she’s invited to the wedding. While she is pleased with the success and takes care of all her clients, some clients touch her more than others. Her current favorite client is Sophie (Zoe Winters), a sweet woman in her late 30s who has not yet found her perfect match. One thing Lucy likes about Sophie that she is realistic about potential matches, something not true for all her clients, some of whom have extensive wish-lists like they are ordering a custom-designed car instead of hoping to meet a romantic match.

Sophie has just come off a date the night before, and all sounds good from her end, but when Lucy calls the man she went out with declines a second date based on superficial things. Lucy has to both gently break this disappointing news to Sophie and find another date for her, which Lucy does with both skill and compassion, letting us see her warm heart and why she is so good at this job.

At the wedding of her successfully matched client, Lucy meets a man, Harry (Pedro Pascal), the brother of the groom, who is impressed with her success. Lucy offers her card and matchmaking services, but the brother already has a date already in mind – the matchmaker herself. Lucy tells her she ‘s not in the market, but agrees to see him, hoping to gain him as a client by convincing him she is not the match her needs.

While Lucy and Harry chat at the wedding, a server with the catering company walks up – her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans). She warmly embraces him and they agree to meet after the wedding to catch-up, before John goes back to work. Harry is taken aback a bit by the exchange but he doesn’t leave, and sets up a meeting with Lucy at a restaurant. A meeting to her, a date to Harry.

A flashback scene gives us the story of Lucy and John’s break-up, in which we learn he is a struggling actor, taking catering jobs between acting ones, and that his perpetually broke-ness is a big reason for their break-up.

Having set up this uneven romantic triangle, MATERIALISTS follows that romantic tale, as well as Lucy’s work with her clients and particularly that favorite client Sophie, and plot line that illustrates some of the downside and risks in this kind of arranged dating.

One of the strengths of MATERIALISTS is excellent dialog, which is remarkably insightful and realistic, as it was in Song’s previous film PAST LIVES. The well-written dialog helps lifts this film far above the usual romantic comedy, making it intelligent, honest and thought-provoking in a way you don’t expect in this genre. Not that MATERIALIST isn’t funny – it definitely is – but the humor is more sly, more satiric, and filled with social commentary on a society obsessed with the surface of things and people more that what is underneath.

A lot of the humor comes out how transactional everyone, or nearly everyone, is in their pursuit of the perfect love match. Some of this is both laugh-out-loud funny, and a bit chilling underneath, or even sad. Some clients try to game the system, with plastic surgery and other interventions, fudging facts, or comically ridiculous assessments of one’s own value in the dating “marketplace.” These things range from the silly to the sad, as the clients compete, as if love is a game where keeping score matters.

Dakota Johnson turns in what may be her best performance so far, as a woman who seems coolly in control of her own romantic life – mostly – yet is warm, human and soothing with her clients. She maintains this smooth, comforting surface most of the time, but dies eventually becoming exasperated with a few of clients with unrealistic expectations, reminding them they are looking for a human being, not ordering a custom car. Likewise, Pedro Pascal does well as the wealthy man who strews material temptations in the matchmaker’s path, while we remain unsure of the depth of his feelings, even if marriage is his stated goal. As John, Chris Evans continues to prove his skill as an actor, following up his amazing performance in A DIFFERENT MAN, with this thoughtful one, a man whose feelings aren’t in doubt but whose life seems a mess that he may not be able to fix.

The film does not directly mention traditional matchmaking, which many cultures have followed for generation, versus falling in love with someone unaided, and hopefully sharing values and dreams with them. But MATERIALISTS does explore some pitfalls of this modern form of matchmaking, where only a certain amount of information can be known about the character and background of potential matches, unlike the traditional form where, ideally, both parties are part of a community of which the matchmaker is also a part, and the depth of knowledge of each individual is much greater.

MATERIALISTS is a smart, pointedly-funny romantic comedy, with terrific dialog and a non-traditional plot, that offers a frank yet fascinating look at the ways of love, from a perspective where the practical and the magical need to be a certain balance to find true love and then true happiness.

MATERIALISTS opens in theaters on Friday, June 13, 2025.

RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars

PAST LIVES – Review

(L-R) Teo Yoo as Hae Sung and Greta Lee as Nora, in PAST LIVES. Photo Credit: Jon Pack. Courtesy of A24

In South Korea, two close childhood friends, a boy and a girl, both nearly 12, are separated when the girl’s family moves to the United States. Twelve years later, they reconnect, although he’s still in South Korea and she’s in New York, in Celine Song’s impressive drama PAST LIVES.

PAST LIVES is a romance of sorts but not like you imagine. What it is, however, is a moving drama with a brilliant script, brilliantly acted and filmed, and masterfully directed by Celine Song, who also wrote the script. Spanning decades and half the globe, PAST LIVES explores how once-close people both reconnect and diverge over time and distance.

One could describe PAST LIVES as an intelligent person’s romance. Making a romantic drama where the audience truly is on the edge of their seat is no mean feat, yet PAST LIVES does just that. In part it is because it avoids some of the tropes of romance but where some familiar elements are unavoidable, it breaks the rules by having the characters talk about them and dissect them, giving the feel of both realism, conveying the characters’ intelligence, and adding a sly humor.

As bright children and close friends in South Korea, she is the ambitious one, the girl who always gets the top grade, with her friend a close second, but who cries when that doesn’t happen. He is patient and supportive with the crying girl, as she calls herself, and he is comfortable in her shadow in second place.

She confesses to her sister that she has a crush on her friend.

He is distressed when she tells him the family is emigrating. She says it is because they want to give her, their gifted daughter, more opportunities to succeed. It is a bit more complicated than that, but at that time, South Korea is in economic doldrums.

Before the family leaves, the girls pick “American names” for themselves and she picks Nora. So Nora has a good last memory of her crush, the mothers arrange for Nora and Hae Sung to have a “date” in a playground, with the moms nearby.

Each pursue their education and career goals, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) as an engineer in South Korea and Nora (Greta Lee) as a playwright in New York. After 12 years, Hae Sung finds Nora online, and we realize that he shared her childhood crush.

PAST LIVES delivers a moving, bittersweet but refreshingly real drama that plays out over time, as the two both connect and don’t, while the time passes and cultural experiences diverge.

This is writer/director Celine Song’s debt feature film but you would never guess that, as she has long experience in theater. The story was inspired by a moment of personal experience, as she sat in a bar with her husband and her Korean childhood sweetheart, translating between them and realizing they would never have met but for her.

As Nora, Greta Lee impresses constantly, with her ability to portray Nora at various points in her life and to convey complex, nuanced emotions with startling clarity. Handsome Teo Yoo’s character is less expressive and open than Lee’s Nora, and the character’s opaqueness adds a layer of tension throughout the drama. While the film has a romantic thread, it also has a sustained tension. As these two progress in their lives and reconnect periodically, the drama also explores the immigrant experience over time, something rarely done.

It is hard to overstate how finely crafted, emotionally effective and dramatically efficient this drama is. On top of the script’s moving story and beautifully built structure, it is visually impressive, with spare use of striking shots at just the right moment. One of those comes late in the film, as the childhood friends talk with the Statue of Liberty in the background and another in the film’s final shot, one that goes back to the childhood.

PAST LIVES is an impressive drama, that combines a fresh and real take on romance with different tale of immigration, further elevated by excellent performances, strong and spare story-telling and skillful direction from Celine Song.

PAST LIVES opens Friday, June 23, in theaters.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars