Welcome to Dykes Discuss, where we discuss media and topics that aren’t necessarily lesbian-forward but that we still want to weigh in on! We have fun! Today, we are discussing Materialists, Celine Song’s new film starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans.
Drew: First of all, how tall are you and how much money do you make?
Christina: I am 5’10 and mostly unemployed. I am not worth much on the old market, per this movie.
Drew: Well, you’re a unicorn to ME.
Christina: Wow thank you!!
Drew: So we’re here to talk about Materialists, Celine Song’s follow up to Past Lives. Here she trades the romantic longing and poetic regret of her debut for what starts off as a dark satire of modern romance and capitalism. The long conversations are still there but instead of being emotional they are… sinister.
Christina: Here’s my thing: weird movie!!!
Drew: Bizarre movie.
Christina: I really can’t settle on how I feel about it, which is deeply unlike me for a movie! I think I liked the sinister parts best! Largely because Dakota Johnson simply has a sinister energy.
Drew: Right, at first I was like oh Song is doing something really interesting here. To follow up a lovely romantic drama with a film that’s marketed as a return to the classic romcom only to not be funny and instead be terrifying… I was like yes yes yes.
So maybe let’s start off with what we liked. I agree Dakota Johnson has sinister energy and I thought she was perfectly cast for what the movie was initially doing. I also find her charming which might be my own penchant for Libras.
Christina: I find Dakota compelling but I don’t know if it is derogatory or complimentary, truly. I think she works better in the darker moments, but I simply had a hard time believing she cared about anything in that first half hour.
Drew: I had a hard time believing that too. Which was working for me!
I think the film does a really good job selling the modern reality that being rich is better. I mean, I’m sure it always was better. But the bigger the gap gets between rich people and everyone else, the more understandable it would be to want to eat at a bunch of really great restaurants instead of having two roommates in a tiny apartment. I felt like the movie was saying yeah she’s shallow but why wouldn’t someone be in 2025? And I found that idea horrifying but also compelling.
Christina: Right but then it undercuts her shallowness at the end—it feels like the whole movie is her being like “well of course I want money” and then she ends up not caring???
Drew: Yes. It starts as this really effective portrait of capitalism and the current state of heterosexual romance only to… have her choose the guy with no money AND on top of that suggest she’s also going to turn down a promotion? I just didn’t get what it was doing. It didn’t sell me on her love for Chris Evans’ character John and it certainly didn’t sell me on her changing to the point of not caring about money. At least not to that extent.
When she kisses John outside the apartment, she has to get on her tip-toes, and I was like oh wow did she choose John because he’s naturally tall? Did she really end things with Pedro Pascal’s Henry because he had height surgery? For straight women, does natural height beat money?? But then there’s 20 more minutes that’s insisting her decision is actually pure.
Christina: There is an attempt to make it seem as though the love between John and Lucy is this great love, but she has roughly the same amount of chemistry with both leads. And, to me, she cannot sell that she is head over heels in love with John to the point of throwing Henry away.
I might be in real time convincing myself I don’t like Dakota, whoops! The potential is there! I just want people to use her right.
Drew: For me, this almost did to an extent I haven’t seen since Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash. (Sorry I am not a Guadagnino’s Suspiria person but I’ve been meaning to give it a second shot since Lisa wrote this piece.)
I’m also fascinated by what the film reveals about heterosexuality. Like I obviously knew that straight women cared about height and straight men liked women in their 20s but I think I’m just around gay people so much I was cracking up at all of that.
Money I understand, but needing a man to be six foot is so stupid???
Christina: Sigh.
Look. It is dumb! And I am probably not the best test case I as am in fact so gay I did hate all the men I dated! But I feel as a tall girl, I had the right to care about height. Not so much because EYE personally cared, but my god the men did! The amount of them that would simply lie to my face about their height! Insisting I MUST be shorter! So indeed it is deeply straight, and men wanting to feel big and strong and it is DUMB. But god does it matter!!
Drew: During my time as a 5’5 man, I had multiple girls be like wow it’s so cool that you don’t care if I wear heels. And I was like why would I care?? Only to learn all the other guys they dated were obsessed with being and seeming taller.
Christina: It’s wild to me! But this indeed is the world we live in
I wonder if that’s why the movie felt so strange to me? Because so much of it felt like attempting to portray the cold hard reality of modern dating, only to then try to have a romantic, grand gesture ending. Those two ideas are incompatible methinks!
Drew: Even the way the sexual assault plot pivots. I know a lot of people found the whole storyline to totally not work, but I actually found it to be really effective at first. Showing the most painful reality of dating in contrast with Lucy’s mathematical approach felt consistent with the dark tone of the film. But then she calls her to come to the rescue?? And it ends up being what motivates Lucy to want to be with John? Once it became a heightened part of a romance plot it just felt sort of gross and I didn’t understand what the movie was actually doing.
Christina: That plot line worked for me too! People seem to have really hated it and her reaction to it in a way that surprised me? Also Zoe Winters is incredible and I fear that is getting lost in the discourse about the plot. Like KERRY?? from SUCCESSION??
Drew: She’s so good!
Christina: People seem bothered that we got more screen time with Lucy dealing with it (and being redeemed by it) but I was like…well it is a movie about her? And also at what point are we calling a character doing something nice after making a mistake a “redemption attempt.” What’s the right call there, you know? I can’t say how I’d react!
Drew: I think it just felt off when it become the climax of a romcom.
And tones can be blurred! You and I both love Moonstruck and Broadcast News and those are big romcoms that also have more serious moments. But it’s very hard to pull that off and for me this did not. And it certainly helps to pull it off when your characters have chemistry.
Also casting Dasha Nekrasova in your modern yuppie horrorshow is annoying but effective. Casting her in your romcom is… gross.
Christina: Once again I think there are things that would have worked for me had I believed in these characters generally.
But, even with all his charm, Pedro got so little to do?? Nothing to be?
Drew: Either the point needs to be this sort of cold, stylized remove. Or you need to cast someone other than Chris Evans as the struggling actor we’re supposed to fall in love with.
Christina: Okay can I be brave and admit something? Despite my disclaimer about hating men, I am…low key feral for Chris Evans with a beard. I am blaming it on living in Boston for too long. But there it is.
Drew: Wow that is brave but I don’t judge it.
Christina: This does not mean I buy him as a schlub.
Drew: I actually did find something interesting about how tall and handsome he was in the context of the movie. Because it really made the issue of money more focused.
But then they kissed !!!! The closeup of that kiss had me… I was like oh god is this supposed to be hot?
Christina: It felt very technical, that kiss.
It inspired me to watch a good romcom kiss (randomly went with George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day, it’s outrageous) because it just didn’t quite land!!
Drew: Straight people can kiss good! There are many examples!
Cut the “cave people” bit and go from Lucy and John at the wedding to Lucy marrying Henry six months later and I would have LOVED this movie. And I’m not usually a cynic about love. I just think this movie was doing cynicism a lot better than sincerity.
Christina: CUT THE CAVE PEOPLE
What are we doing with that??? None of that can possibly be true??? Not usually how I think about movies but I was just so distracted by it.
Drew: It was bizarre.
When they were brought back at the end I was like ohhh this is a fake thing Lucy is referencing to sell to a client. But then it was like no we’re playing it straight she’s IN LOVE. And I was like ???
Christina: This movie is SO STRANGE
I am not usually a person who concerns myself too much with what a movie is trying to say and mostly I think about how I react to it, but this one! It did end up confusing me, because it has…nothing to say? Because it undercuts itself so much?
Drew: I think it’s saying a lot but then it suggests all that it’s saying doesn’t matter in the face of TRUE LOVE and I was not at all convinced of that nor convinced that what it showed us was in fact true love.
But can I say one hot take defending the movie?
Christina: Yes because I am sounding more negative than I maybe actually am? Mostly I am just perplexed.
Drew: I thought it made perfect sense that Lucy’s annual salary was $80k. Okay so she’s great at her job… she’s also just an employee? I’m great at my job and I make less than that. Welcome to 2025, baby.
AND I even think it makes sense she’d have her wardrobe on that salary because she’s a character who prioritizes aesthetics and fitting in with rich people. I just assumed her wardrobe had been gifted to her by her boss/past clients/past lovers. She is playing a role and that role is dreammaker to the rich. Rich people don’t want their dreammaker looking poor.
Christina: If there is one thing I believe about Lucy as a character no QUESTION is that girl is an expert level vintage/consignment/sample sale shopper
Drew: Exactly. There are plenty of ways to look rich if that’s your life’s priority.
Materialists is now in theatres.
