🎬 I’ve been waiting for the film Materialists for a while now. Not just because Celine Song directed one of my favourite films of 2023, Past Lives. But because Materialists promised to be the perfect summer film. Dakota Johnson is a matchmaker, caught between two men, who the internet has been calling Billionaire Pedro Pascal, and non-Pedro Pascal. Comment sections by women declared that if Dakota – Lucy Mason in the film – didn’t choose the Pedro character, well then, they don’t know what the metrics for choosing are anymore. I myself had vowed that if Dakota didn’t choose Pedro in the film, then I was going to upturn the hypothetical table.
🎬 So Lucy Mason knows that all marriages are business deals, and compares her job to a mortician or an insurance salesman. That is: Doctor, 6’1, receding hairline, nice smile, $100k a year. That’s how she matches up people, by doing the math. When she meets Pedro at a wedding of one of her clients, she immediately sizes him up.
🎬 It’s actually criminal that the viral Tiktok song of 2024, “I’m looking for a man in finance. 6’5. Trust fund. Blue eyes,” wasn’t playing in the background during this meet cute. Such a missed opportunity. Because it’s all true. Except for the blue eyes, since Pedro is of Hispanic origin in both reel and real life. Lucy tries to woo Pedro as a client , but he’s more interested in her. Even though she grew up poor, with bickering parents, and earns $80K a year. She tells him that the math doesn’t add up. He tells her he sees value in her.
🎬 But Materialists isn’t 27 dresses, which I guess is why some viewers are feeling betrayed by it. It’s a look at love and marriage through the lens of money. Because marriage – as declared by Amy in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women – is an economic proposition. And this is refreshing, because I’ve actually not seen a romantic film that engages with the economics of partnership with the frankness + weightage we give it in real life.
Most romantic films are one of the two:
📌 Enemies to lovers
📌 Boy meets girl - they get together - misunderstandings occur - get back together again.
But here’s a stat: the leading cause of divorce globally is financials.
In India, it’s in-laws, and then financials.
🎬 In fact, the genre comparable to Materialists is not 27 dresses, but Indian matchmaking, with the inimitable Seema aunty and the list of Criteria she must do battle with. Indian matchmaking was the opposite of romance. It was a look at humanity at its most transactional. As the film says, you wouldn’t be so honest even with your therapist because of the intrinsic human guard against being judged. But when it comes to your partner. Political correctness be damned. Who you choose is what you believe.
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