What Kind of Movie Will Materialists Be?
Me trying to decide which guy to end up while figuring life out in New York City.
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/A24
Does Celine Song want to bring back the romantic comedy? That’s the apparent vibe in the May 8 trailer for her new film, Materialists, out on June 13. Her latest stars Dakota Johnson as a sardonic (likely thing for her to be) matchmaker (only in the movies!) trying to decide between a rough-and-tumble ex played by Chris Evans and a penthouse-owning private-equity type played by Pedro Pascal. For a woman who is so good at knowing what other people want, Johnson’s Lucy can’t make up her mind. Whereas Song’s last film, Past Lives, had a low-key, melancholic sheen, as though we were watching that love triangle play out through fogged-up windows, there’s an unexpectedly light and broad appeal to how Materialists is being marketed. Take, for instance, the voice-over in this new trailer, which sounds right out of the mid-aughts and/or a Saturday Night Live digital short making fun of trailers from the mid-aughts.
“In the world of matchmaking,” a deep, authoritative voice tells us, “no one plays the game better than Lucy, but love isn’t part of her equation.” The throwback nature of the latest trailer — in tandem with the new character sheets that A24 posted, which describe Evans’s John as “voted for Bernie” and Pascal’s Harry as “old money” — suggests a more playful tone than we’ve seen from Song’s work so far. While the trailer isn’t outrightly funny, the marketing around the film suggests a more light-hearted, if not self-aware, approach to the material. Johnson and Evans in particular share a knack for easy-going romantic fluff, having cut their teeth in movies like How to Be Single and What’s Your Number?. What kind of movie Materialists wants to be may be a more compelling question than who Lucy winds up choosing at the end of the day. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to find out.
