In her wistful debut, Previous Lives (2023), the writer-director Celine Tune explored the Korean idea of inyeon: each relationship is predetermined by destiny, particularly the intertwining of two individuals of their previous lives. “It’s inyeon if two strangers even stroll by one another on the street and their garments by chance brush,” its heroine, Nora, explains. “If two individuals get married, they are saying it’s as a result of there have been 8,000 layers of inyeon over 8,000 lifetimes.” In Tune’s tough second album, love is ruled by extra materialist forces.
Based on Lucy (a shiny, inscrutable Dakota Johnson), an expert matchmaker answerable for 9 weddings, relationship is transactional and marriage a enterprise deal. Her shoppers are struggling to navigate the “market”, with their lists of deal-breakers and non-negotiables: minimal six toes tall, six-figure wage, hairline holding on in there. Love isn’t a query of some mysterious, intangible energy, however of appropriate household backgrounds, monetary conditions, ranges of attractiveness. In different phrases, Lucy says, “it’s simply math”.
Like Previous Lives, Materialists issues a love triangle. Lucy attends the marriage of a shopper and, earlier than she takes her seat on the singles’ desk, should first discuss the bride out of calling off the entire thing. The mascara-streaked white puffball on the mattress admits she needs to marry her fiancé as a result of he makes her sister jealous; the matchmaker pulls off a posh semantic vault: “So he makes you’re feeling helpful.”
“I do” safely secured, Lucy takes her seat for dinner subsequent to Harry, the brother of the groom. Harry (performed by man-of-the-moment Pedro Pascal) is what matchmakers name a “unicorn”, a person who’s too good to be true: tall, rich, good-looking, charming, with impossibly good style in flowers. Lucy tries to recruit him as a shopper; he tries to get her into mattress.
That mattress is bedecked in sheets so lustrous they have to be thrown away on the finish of every week, for they’d absolutely not survive something so workaday as a washer. The mattress is located in a $12bn (I do know this as a result of Lucy asks him) Tribeca penthouse, handsomely embellished in heat white and walnut. Lucy can’t assist however gawp, her eyes shifting voraciously, whereas Harry kisses her neck. They date, and Harry insists he’s enthusiastic about her “intangible belongings”, however Lucy can’t shake the sense that “the maths simply doesn’t add up”.
The opposite complicating issue within the equation is John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor and Lucy’s ex, who simply occurs to be working as a cater-waiter on the wedding ceremony. Uninvited, he plonks down Lucy’s go-to drink order – a pint and a Coke – on the desk between her and Harry, as if to say: I do know her higher than you ever will, mate. They broke up, we be taught, as a result of they have been broke. It’s a story as outdated as romcoms: lady pulled between a person who’s excellent on paper and a person she, regardless of all rational self-talk, can’t fairly let go. Not every little thing could be defined by “math”.
Tune’s script is uneven: some strains are acutely nicely noticed, the back-and-forth a rhythmic rally, others eye-roll inducing. Characters say issues like: “You make me courageous sufficient to confess that I need to be glad.” The movie skewers trendy relationship in a depressingly humorous collection of to-camera monologues wherein Lucy’s shoppers element their contradictory requirements for his or her potential companions. One man in his forties claims he needs to satisfy an older, extra mature lady (he normally dates these of their early twenties), however grimaces when she suggests somebody 39: he was considering extra like 27… In different moments, I discovered its objects of enjoyable extra uncomfortable. Lucy seems to don’t have any associates, and teams of girls, after they seem, are homogenous gaggles: bossy bridesmaids strut in matching satin; hysterical matchmakers bounce up and down, squealing.
Materialists is a romcom for the Cash Diaries technology: Lucy discloses that she earns $80,000, and the web asks how she will afford $700 Loeffler Randall knee-high boots. However whereas it’s uncommon to listen to figures talked about so overtly on display screen, romcoms have at all times been about cash, or the collision of various social lessons: lumbermill employee meets heiress (The Pocket book), businessman meets intercourse employee (Fairly Lady), actress meets bookstore proprietor (Notting Hill). In the end, the query Materialists poses – what’s the function of pragmatism in romance? – is way extra fascinating than its schmaltzy reply: love wins, nonetheless illogical or impractical. This we discovered within the 2000s.
Nonetheless, it’s a visible feast: a fantastic image about lovely individuals. There are worse issues for a movie to be. God is aware of I’ve swiped proper on much less.
“Materialists” is in cinemas from 13 August
[See also: 150 years of the bizarre Hans Christian Andersen]