  We investigate optical forces on oscillating dipoles close to a phase-change
vanadium dioxide (VO$_2$) film, which exhibits a metal-insulator transition
around $340$ K and low thermal hysteresis. This configuration is related to one
composed of an excited two-level quantum emitter and we employ a classical
description to capture important aspects of the radiation-matter interaction.
We consider both electric and magnetic dipoles for two different
configurations, namely, with the dipole moments parallel and perpendicular to
the VO$_2$ film. By using Bruggeman theory to describe the effective optical
response of the material, we show that, in the near-field regime, the force on
the dipoles can change from attractive to repulsive just by heating the film
for a selected frequency range. We demonstrate that the thermal hysteresis
present in the VO$_2$ transition clearly shows up in the behavior of the
optical forces, setting the grounds for alternative approaches to control
light-matter interactions using phase-change materials.
