'Materialists' Tries to Subvert the Rom-Com

In the scant verdure of a steep, rocky landscape, a man in earthy rags sets down a bag of crude tools and picks out a single white flower, then loops its stem around the finger of a woman in a fur pelt. From our present vantage, on the other side of some millennia, the gesture is laden with all kinds of meaning: a marital promise, an exchange of goods—or just a token of animal affection? But the prehistoric ur-couple radiate a kind of naïve clarity, their faces brimming with the joy they find in each other. This is the brief and unexpected opening of Celine Song’s Materialists, a prologue that announces a certain loftiness in the film’s premise. Or in spite of it, as a sudden cut flings us into the classic opener of many a millennial rom-com: the cosmopolitan heroine at her vanity, getting ready for her white-collar job in the big city.