Not what I was expecting.
I’d happened to see bits of trailers and had the impression it was a romantic comedy. Nope, not by any traditional standards. It’s a romance, but very little humor, and what there is of it is bitter or cynical. Overall, it’s just another movie of a woman (Dakota Johnson), a professional matchmaker, as it happens, thinking she has the opportunity for the wealthy man of her dreams (Pedro Pascal), but still drawn back to an earlier love, or at least an earlier boyfriend (Chris Evans). In effect, it's a choice between money for love. In other words, not so very different from a 1940s idea.
Despite the critical praise, I didn’t think it was particularly interesting. The writer-director Celine Song evinces no intellect, no sense of humor, no meticulousness of detail. As a matter of fact, at the very end, there’s a brief scene that dissolves into New York improbability, as the heroine Dakota Johnson leaves her boyfriend sitting out overnight on the stoop instead of in the lobby. There’s no sense of the main characters having larger lives, not even friends. When the heroine has no place to stay for a week or two (having briefly sublet her apartment, which a New Yorker would never do for such a short time), she hasn’t a single friend or colleague to call.
Visually it’s surprisingly unattractive. Even Pascal’s supposedly ideal lavish $20 million home is dull and sterile, as if the director has no clue how to signal an interesting, engaged, cultured person.
The only interesting element is that it bluntly confronts not just the stereotype of men demanding younger women, but women’s emphasis on men’s money – and height. The one remarkable moment points out the difference in female reaction to a men’s height, with the man crouching to illustrate the difference of a mere six inches, between 5’6” and 6’. It’s pretty damn startling and drives home the point.
I recently read a review that said it was lacking in energy. I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s exactly right.