Materialists

Song resists the urge to follow any formula herself, forging questions about love and romance that can’t all be answered by the time the credits roll and the lights go up.

Materialists is a romantic film for pragmatists, a pragmatic film for romantics. Opposites attract, and it’s a perfect match.

It’s tempting to say that Song went a more traditional route, but her second film is in fact a bold reshaping of the romcom.

Despite good acting across the board, I never bought it.

The issues it wants to address are deep&#59; the way they are addressed is thin. More than once characters talk about feeling valued or worthless. What makes people feel valued by themselves or others, is tantalizingly raised, but frustratingly sketched.

Decidedly a film from the writer/director of “Past Lives,” another thoughtful film about a love triangle and the way that our pasts haunt our futures.

There’s realism, and then there’s cold, calculated detachment. It’s the latter of which the misguided and tonally vapid 'Materialists' falls into.

I felt that these strengths were overshadowed by a forced relationship that I never truly invested in. By the time the film reached its conclusion, I found myself detached and ultimately disappointed.


I may not have been won over by every choice, but I was glad to have gone through the journey.

While Pascal is his usual charming self, Evans delivers his finest work to date, revealing an emotional depth and vulnerability that’s rarely surfaced in his uneven career.