Love, Actually… Costs Too Much

London. February. Leicester Square. I emerge from the dimly lit bowels of Prince Charles Cinema into the customary city drizzle and try to make myself cry. Celine Song’s breakout debut Past Lives just finished playing and I’m convinced that I should feel *something*. This is, after all, cinema. I am, after all, a lover of the finer things and connoisseur of the melancholic. There is, after all, a history of near misses and almost happenings that, much like with the two pensive leads, has followed me across years, continents, and academic institutions. I try, but fail to stir in myself some vestiges of deep emotion and as I stare through to the suffocatingly bare streets beyond, I’m left with an overwhelming feeling of “well, this is just the way things are.” Maneuvering around the hordes of bewildered tourists and disgruntled passerbys, I wonder how many layers of inyeon must pass between any one of them to warrant even a slither of connection. 

Nearly a year and a half later, my friend and I are leaving Varsity theatre and can’t stop cackling over the broke man propaganda. We’ve just finished watching Materialists and are utterly bewildered. The film - with its seemingly earnest posturing about love and the evils of commodification promised to be the indy cinematic event of the summer. Instead, we are left scratching our heads, wondering whether any form of subversion was in the room with us, and certainly not feeling obligated to feel anything at all. 

The change from morosely relatable to hilariously out of touch from one film to the other, separated by a mere two years, would be hilarious if it wasn’t so empty. Much like my feigning of emotion at the end of Past Lives, the titular materialists try to make themselves care. But to little avail. The trouble with Materialists isn’t that it’s not saying anything—it’s that it thinks it is.

If anything, it’s a return to form. The romcoms of the early 2000s in which reality was completely divorced from the material. We watched as beautiful people with unrealistically high-paying jobs and lifestyles to match agonized over their prospective partners as if it was the most important thing in the world. And perhaps, it was. It could even be argued that the people of yore (pre–2008 financial crashes, conflict escalations, pandemics, and looming technocratic autocracies) could somewhat sympathize. No longer. Now, we are financially and socially screwed, and frankly have better things to think about. Partnering up has become a form of survival, not self-fulfillment. We strive for the reprieve of a double income in the face of rising rent costs and inflation as much, if not more so, than for someone to see us for who we are and assuage our worries. What can, after all, accomplish that better than cold hard cash?

Materialists places its viewers in the position of the detached suitors that the heroine manages every day. In that, we know nothing at all beyond the surface level of the three leads. Pedro Pascal’s Harry is rich and indulgent to an almost saint-like degree, his supposed rival Jack—played true to trope by Chris Evans—is passionate and poor, and Lucy—the woman in the middle of the two—is Dakota Johnson, effortlessly cool and acidically pragmatic. That is, of course, until the final ten minutes of the movie when all seems to be washed away by the magic of love.

In the flashback of Lucy and Jack’s relationship breakdown, the phrase “we are too poor to be happy” is thrown out amidst the stalled New York traffic. Here Materialists comes close to touching the edge of something interesting, but alas, abandons the train of thought as we barrel through what can only graciously be defined as a plot. In this regard, it commits one of its greatest sins—failing to be either a poignant commentary or indulgent escapism.

It insists on showing us the grime without the consequence. Ending the same way that a lot of its brethren do: with the heroine passing up on a lucrative promotion and choosing love over comfort. To do what exactly? One of her defining traits was the ability to navigate the New York City currents, to balance work, survival, and pleasure in equal measure. Stripped of that, she becomes just another vehicle for a hollow moral.

Somewhere in the background looms the B-plot involving one of Lucy’s clients and the assault she inadvertently facilitated. This seems to be tacked on from a more developed picture. There might be a deeper exploration here of dating culture and the ever-present threat it’s wrapped in, but Materialists never really dares to go there. All it does is gesture vaguely, then pull back. In fact, my friend and I were left wondering during its resolution whether we were in for the biggest switch-up yet and were actually about to be witnessing a thriller. Alas, we live in hope.

Cinema is, at its best, a mirror—reflecting us back at ourselves, even when we don’t particularly want to look. But lately, the reflections have started to look less like lived experience and more like hollow gestures towards it. Between Past Lives and Materialists, I’ve sat in the dark waiting to feel something, anything, and come up short. Maybe that’s the real punchline: we are too broke, too tired, and too online to be convinced by anything less than the real thing.

Forever Yours,
The Second Column