When you think of A24’s romance releases, Past Lives (dir. Celine Song) and Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins) likely come rushing to your mind. Whilst they have received critical acclaim, the mark they have made extends far beyond that. They’re pieces that comment on the complexities of love in a nuanced manner. Through visual motifs and layered dialogue, they capture the essence of raw human emotion.
With that in mind, when the UK was set to have three more romance releases from A24 this year, my heart leaped for joy. However, I quickly found myself descending into a personal hell, and only now have I found a route to salvation. From Babygirl to Eternity, what led A24’s road to impactful romances astray?
Babygirl
Halina Reijn’s Babygirl is a film I had nothing and everything to say about simultaneously. It is rare that we find a strong female lead navigating her sexuality at an older age in mainstream film. Therefore, when a topic this taboo was receiving its flowers, I felt a sense of admiration. A concept that I thought I would deeply appreciate came crashing down on me, as not only myself but my fellow theatre goers found the themes displayed on screen cringeworthy, hysterical, and blatantly creepy. Elements as overt as the age gap and professional disparity between Kidman and Dickinson’s characters unsettle the film’s dynamic, shifting our allegiance. This reveals Kidman not as a victim of power, but its most unsettling offender. The film incorrectly assumes audiences will lean into the ‘girlboss’ trope by positioning Kidman in a role that stereotypically would be pursued by a male lead, but doesn’t consider that creepy is just creepy regardless of gender. This becomes amplified in the sex scenes. The phrase ‘animalistic desires’ are taken too literally, with the visuals framing Kidman in sexual pet-play, and attributing this to her childhood trauma. This project was one that set out to be ambitious but quickly fell on its own face by displacing A24’s traditional whispers into overwhelming screams that made its core themes hard to digest.
Materialists
Celine Song’s Materialists fell victim to a similar fallacy. It hones in on superficiality, ambition, and security in romance, choosing to magnify these themes through the lens of self-reflection and identity. Though it would be a sin to critique Song’s visual language, the way in which these motifs were explored in Past Lives were exceptional compared to the flaccidity in this project. Each shot maintains a picturesque quality, however they don’t engage the audience intellectually as more often than not the meanings are glaringly obvious. For example, Lucy’s (Dakota Johnson) clothes were simpler with John (Chris Evans) compared to the more sophisticated attire worn with Harry (Pedro Pascal). The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree with the dialogue either ‘I don’t know if I like you or just the places you take me to.’ Although the irony of superficiality is intended to sit at the heart of Materialists, Song steps too far over the line for it to be mistaken as anything other than the thing she is critiquing. Ultimately, the film leaves a bland taste in the mouth rendering it pretty but slightly pointless.
Eternity
David Freyne’s Eternity was the saving grace to A24’s romance trilogy of 2025; this film executed its promise faithfully. Unlike Materialists that was marketed as a romcom but only ended up being a ‘rom’, Eternity had me giggling throughout. It was witty, and that’s exactly what drew me in. My guard lowered, so now was time for A24 romances to revert back to tradition and do what they do best: make me weep in the best way possible. Where Babygirl and Materialists lost themselves in muddled execution, Eternity aligns with the films before it and captures its audience by striking at the psychological core rather than the cosmetic. Every shot pulses with different variations of primary colours, layering the visuals with symbolic intent and emotional texture. The dialogue sounds ordinary, but works efficiently because it feels natural and real. The characters Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), Larry (Miles Teller), and Luke (Callum Turner) brighten these elements as they individually represent versions of ourselves in relation to feelings of love, and this is what makes the film thrive. There’s no complexifying an already complex emotion, and there’s no dumbing it down, it simply is explored as it exists in reality.
This is why A24 romances have made such an impact previously: they illuminate feelings in their purest form and that’s refreshing. With Eternity following this strategy, it redeemed A24 romances from the abyss, and one can only hope this continues, enabling the distributor’s romances to regain their place at the forefront of the genre.
