Shadows on the Wall | Materialists

Materialists

dir-scr Celine Song
prd David Hinojosa, Pamela Koffler, Celine Song, Christine Vachon
with Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Marin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova, Emmy Wheeler, Louisa Jacobson, Eddie Cahill, Sawyer Spielberg, Joseph Lee, John Magaro
release US 13.Jun.25,
UK 15.Aug.25
25/US A24 1h56

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For her second film, Celine Song deconstructs the romcom with a smart, witty exploration of the nature of love. She both resists and revels in the usual formula, while finding new paths into three smart, likeable central characters. The dense dialog requires the audience to pay attention, but it's worth the effort as the story finds insights into the difference between true love and how society defines romance.

New York matchmaker Lucy (Johnson) is attending the ninth wedding between clients when she meets Harry (Pascal), the groom's charming brother and the perfect match for any woman looking for an obscenely wealthy man. And he asks her out. At the same time, Lucy reunites with her ex John (Evans), a struggling actor who still lives with loser flatmates. They broke up over an argument about $25. But Harry was born rich and lives in an astonishing penthouse. He certainly checks all the boxes for Lucy, and they have a strong spark of attraction too.

There's a nagging sense of where this is heading, but Song's script plays knowingly with the issues. She also weaves in a dark side-story about one of Lucy's clients (Winters), whose awful experience demolishes Lucy's confidence, leaving her more vulnerable to Harry's attentions. Or maybe John's. None of this is played simplistically, and conversations circle around enormously involving themes that are easy to identify with. So it feels like we're intimately involved in each discussion, throwing our own opinions into the mix.

At the centre, Johnson walks a tricky line as Lucy, a woman who knows the power of her public persona but needs to remember who she really is. So her carefully curated image is undermined by subtle revelations. She generates terrific chemistry with the almost criminally alluring Pascal, who also adds knowing edges of authenticity to his ideal-man role. And Evans brings a likeable scruffiness to John, a solid guy whose self-doubt is clearly because life hasn't gone the way he hoped it would.

While the film's talkiness sometimes feels a tiring, the way these people express thoughts and feelings is riveting, cutting through to deeper ideas and new perspectives. The film recognises that people always look for what they can get from a relationship, even as this often leads to broken expectations. As the title suggests, this is confronting love as a commercial transaction that make sure the maths add up. While this can produce a successful partnership, risk takers might actually find something more valuable.

themes, language 14.Jul.25

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