Materialists: the director of Past Lives disappoints (Critique)

Dakota Johnson plays cupids in a materialist New York where love is a commodity like the others. Falsely sophisticated and really hollow.

Receiving Past Livesthe first feature film of Celine Song, held fairy tale: Critical hue reception, Oscar appointments, instant “generational” echo … Among the qualities of the film, there was this way of talking about the couple in a new way, partly disenchanted, which took into account the cultural and socio-economic factors which president of any love story, as romantic would be. This very prosaic approach is at the heart of Matterswhich seizes a more archetypal Rom-Com diagram. Either Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a New York “matchmaker” who organizes romantic encounters for very frocked customers, and whose heart will soon find herself swinging between a wealthy BG (Pedro Pascal) and her former ex (Chris Evans), a galérian actor that she had left a few years earlier because she was fed up that he could never invite her to luxury. The tone first a little cold, detached, of the film, which gives the impression of adhering to the values ​​of this cynical and ultra-materialist world, destabilizes at first, before diluting itself with dull scenes, without rhythm or humor, using Essoré gimmicks (the meetings of the matchmaker with her clients scrolling to the camera). We end up understanding that Celine Song is actually content to pass a falsely sophisticated varnish on banal considerations and good old romantic comedy, for a pretentious and conformist result.

From Celine Song with Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans … Duration 1h49. Release on July 2, 2025