Chris Evans vs Pedro Pascal

Celine Song’s Past Lives is a heartbreaker of a film, at once dreamy and romantic, and pragmatic about the realities of life, of the way people ebb and flow from our lives, and how love changes shape, or doesn’t, over time. Her follow-up film, Materialists, seems cut from the same cloth with, perhaps, a slightly wry rom-com edge. 

The trailer dropped yesterday, and it is fantastic.

 

Yes, Dakota Johnson’s wardrobe is swoon-worthy, but so are Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal as the two suitors pulling Johnson’s character, Lucy, in opposite directions. Lucy is a matchmaker, and she meets Pedro Pascal’s character at the wedding of one of her clients. Meanwhile, a waiter at the wedding is her ex, John, played by Chris Evans. They’re on opposite ends of the socio-economic ladder, but both are so handsome and sexy that Lucy’s dilemma is a real case of champagne problems. (Although I did hear my great aunt’s voice in my head while watching this trailer—“if you can manage to love a rich man, do”.)

I’m not going to try to outguess Song’s thematic purpose with only a two minute and twenty-second trailer to judge, but there is an air of the same wistfulness and poignancy in this brief taste of Materialists that is present in Past Lives. Also, the title suggests that materialism, romanticism, and pragmatism may be thematically important as well. But there is humor, too, in the bits of Lucy talking to potential clients, such as the 48-year-old man who wants someone “grown” but balks at a 31-year-old woman. Sir. SIR. Define “grown”, sir. 

Not unlike the rom-com, romantic dramedies have gotten thin on the ground over the last twenty-plus years. They used to be common, the kind of films that examine relationships with nuance, sensitivity, and some degree of sexuality, while also including ludicrous scenarios like “having to choose between Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans”. This is not even a contest in my mind, short of Pascal’s character being a serial killer, how is this even a conversation??????

But that’s what these movies are! Impossibly beautiful people in impossible romantic entanglements that are just deep enough to give credence to the conflict, even if the idea of choosing broke Chris Evans over rich Pedro Pascal is completely bananas (the economic anxiety of the moment is real). And it’s all done while wearing fabulous clothes and swanning in and out of gorgeous real estate. Which begs the question: is Celine Song the new Nora Ephron?