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Love can be a deceptive thing. It is the kind of grand emotion (possibly the greatest and scariest of them all) that can trick you into believing something completely different than what we anticipated. We want to love “love” but often see it as a conniving little thing that knows how to work us inside out. And yet maybe we are the problems not “love,” and maybe love actually is quite simple and it is us humans that continue to throw it into chaos allowing it to dictate feelings and actions that frankly were never truthful from the beginning. And while this may sound like a diary entry from Carrie Bradshaw, MATERIALISTS the second feature from director Celine Song is the kind of movie that has you second guessing yourself due to how deceptive it is as well as how much it does want to show its hand by the end. It’s a card trick where you get to see the behind-the-scenes sleight of hand where you realize the trick was never all that complicated and in fact is just a simple answer. MATERIALISTS is not the anti-rom com answer to an on slew of streaming romance films that carry no weight but instead a film as romantic as it is cynical. Cynical in its understanding that many people do have to be pragmatic about their respected partner and yet full of gorgeous romance in its promise that love is a guarantee for us all. Sure, seems simple enough to just believe we will all find love, but if MATERIALISTS is fighting against anything it is complication, even if it knows we so rarely do the same.

Celine Song is not here to judge. She and her film know the value of materialistic things especially when it comes to dating. Her way of expressing this is in Lucy (Dakota Johnson) a matchmaker in her thirties living in New York City. For Lucy love is numbers often because she sees the matchmaking she pulls off less as true love and more so an acknowledgement that love grows from the acceptance of non-negotiables. She spends her days listening to her clients’ wants in a match, the men want someone with a good body, educated and a decent job. The women want someone with a great job of at least above 200 thousand a year as well as a somewhat good hairline. MATERIALISTS leans in quickly to the world of both app and matchmaker dating and often is quite Manhattan specific. The film understands that anyone familiar with today’s dating world often has to or at least believes they must be pragmatic when it comes to tangible things. It is shallow in the sense especially when reduced to dollars and cents but when Lucy encounters one of her clients on her wedding day afraid to walk down the aisle she asks her point blank what the “real” reason is you are getting married. The brides reason? Her husband makes her sister jealous of her. For Lucy that reason is more than enough to take the vows, if nothing else “he makes you valuable.” So when Lucy encounters Harry (Pedro Pascal) a finance 6-foot-tall man with great hair, the materials are all too easy to accept. Pascal as Harry brings a mysteriousness around him less in the form of a Christian Grey and more so in what you see is what you get so why do I need to convince otherwise. It is a striking comparison Lucy’s past. A past that isn’t that far away from her.

MATERIALISTS may have been marketed as the typical rom-com of “who is the girl going to choose,” but the film is not the throuple battle you might expect or desire. Instead it is a film focused on the past not just as it creeps its way back in but rather reminds you that there may have never been a good enough reason to run in the first place. Enter John (Chris Evans) a broke “cater waiter” and Lucy’s ex-boyfriend still trying to make it as an actor with off-off Broadway plays refusing to do commercials. Evans’ entrance to the film is something has hasn’t been able to do in nearly two decades under the cowl of Captain America. Even at his weakest Evans’ played Steve Rogers with such perseverance as John there is an entirely different and appreciative vulnerability. John is the embodiment of honesty through frustration, he doesn’t want Lucy to see everything he lacks and yet it is also all he has to give to her both physically and emotionally. Evans and Johnson may be kept at wide arm’s length in the early half of the film, but it is remarkable to see these two bounce off one another in moments of silence so overwhelming you feel those butterflies in your heart turn to bee stings. But even as John slowly re-enters Lucy’s life that easier choice never feels that simple. Thankfully Song never needs us to question who is the “better” fit for Lucy. It is not that kind of film but rather show the trials that often must come first or the ones we choose to put ahead that way we can avoid what is so truly in our hearts. Lucy continues with her matchmaking and even in her more open disgust with her clients and their often prejudice requests, Lucy finds herself at an even larger standstill when one of her clients Sophie (Zoe Winters) experiences the darkest reality of dating in a time where evil people prey upon those so in need of love. Winters best known for her time on Succession as Kerry, a character that can only be described as cringe, is a revelation in two of the most heartachingly honest scenes you’ll find in a romantic film this century. It’s a reminder that the data and the numbers these apps and matchmakers collect are just that, data and the interpersonal care they have for us is all but gone. 

It would also be fair to say that the filmmaking techniques of romantic comedies or romance films these past few decades have hit the lowest of lows. This is not to say Song could have just let the camera stand put and we’d applaud her for the bare minimum but it is quite beautiful to see Song in her second feature expand her skills in harboring that same patience she instilled in “Past Lives” while also widening it out to an even more cinematic world that feels reminiscent of the more lived in experiences of films by James L. Brooks or Nancy Meyers. And even with all its vibrant energy of expressed love the film is stock pilled with such tenderness that it often feels like a dream even when the emotions dig deeper into heartbreak. A scene involving John and Lucy at an upstate wedding dissecting why people choose to get married is not just one of the best scenes of the year already it is just an expressive plea to better understand what Song is trying to say. All this accompanied by Daniel Pemberton’s gentle score that feels like a bonus track from a studio Ghibli movie. It is these moments and of course her now staple New York city stoop talks that give the film’s final defense for love and while things may be seen as wrapping itself up in a quickly neat bow, Song chooses to use her last moments to show while yes sometimes it all works out there is still the longstanding belief that to get there you have to understand all the things that make up love frankly don’t matter. Instead, what does matter is the love itself, and that more than often love is expressed to you simply because it is pure truth. Everything else is just stuff.   

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MATERIALISTS IS NOW IN THEATERS FROM A24