Celine Song’s second feature, Materialists, arrived with considerable anticipation after the quiet impact of Past Lives. Where that debut leaned into memory, fate, and transnational longing, her new film turns to the glossy, transactional world of contemporary romance in New York City. The story follows Lucy, a professional matchmaker played by Dakota Johnson, whose work involves pairing wealthy clients with ideal partners according to an unspoken calculus of desirability, pedigree, and prestige. Her skill at navigating this terrain is challenged when she finds herself caught between two men: John, an ex-boyfriend (Chris Evans) who represents a more precarious, emotionally raw kind of intimacy, and Harry, a wealthy, polished suitor (Pedro Pascal) who embodies the kind of security and social perfection her business is designed to sell.
The conceit allows Song to probe a world where dating often resembles a marketplace more than a personal journey. By choosing a protagonist whose profession literally involves treating romance as a series of transactions, she is able to dramatize the ways that wealth, beauty, and cultural capital shape contemporary notions of love. The film’s very title suggests its fixation: the material conditions of romance, and the things people think they should want in a partner versus what actually resonates in their hearts.
Johnson’s performance grounds the film. She plays Lucy with a surface poise that occasionally cracks, revealing uncertainty and longing beneath. There is a studied calmness in her expressions, the look of someone who has learned to watch others closely, but she allows flickers of vulnerability to leak through. Johnson makes Lucy compelling without needing her to be entirely likable. Pedro Pascal brings warmth and sophistication to Harry, making him more than just a cardboard cutout of affluence. He embodies the allure of wealth while hinting at genuine sincerity. Chris Evans, meanwhile, invests John with a bruised earnestness, though at times the script gives him less dimension than he deserves. The triangle works less because of smoldering chemistry—often in short supply—and more because of the uneasy questions it raises about what Lucy values.
Visually, the movie is polished to a sheen. Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner frames upscale apartments, chic restaurants, and immaculate wardrobes in a way that highlights the temptations of privilege even as the film critiques it. The images are crisp and glossy, but Song uses them to point to a hollowness: behind every immaculate surface is anxiety, envy, or dissatisfaction. The camera sometimes lingers on details—a champagne glass left half full, a tightly gripped clutch at a wedding—as if to underline the costs of living in a world where appearances matter so much.
Thematically, Materialists succeeds in asking provocative questions. How do we measure a person’s worth in a culture so obsessed with success? What does it mean to look for a “perfect match” when perfection is defined by class and wealth rather than affection or compatibility? The film’s best moments arrive when Song allows these contradictions to play out in social situations. A wedding sequence, where a bride’s composure unravels under the weight of appearances, provides a sharp critique of how love can become an accessory to status. The scenes in Lucy’s office, where potential clients are sized up like commodities, are equally unsettling, not least because they resemble the judgmental environment of dating apps and social media feeds.
For all its intelligence, the movie sometimes falters in execution. The central romance feels more cerebral than visceral. Lucy’s attraction to Harry often registers as logical rather than passionate, and her connection with John, though meant to embody a more authentic past, occasionally lacks the spark that would make their history feel lived-in. As a result, the film can feel emotionally muted, more interested in dissecting the conditions of love than in making viewers feel swept up by it. Predictability is another drawback. The basic structure of a woman torn between a safe, socially approved suitor and a messier but more heartfelt ex has appeared many times before, and Song doesn’t entirely escape the gravitational pull of genre convention. Certain narrative turns feel telegraphed rather than surprising.
The balance of tone also proves tricky. Song wants to both critique the commodification of romance and deliver elements of a conventional romantic drama. At times, the film leans toward satire, exposing the absurdity of treating relationships as curated products. At other times, it wants to provide the pleasures of a love story. The shifts can be jarring, especially in the final act, where the resolution feels softer and more predictable than the sharper critique that the earlier sections promise. The result is a film that begins as a bold interrogation of love under capitalism but ends closer to a polished but familiar romance.
Yet even with these limitations, Materialists offers plenty to admire. It feels rooted in the cultural present: dating apps, influencer culture, economic precarity, and the obsession with appearances all haunt the edges of the story. Lucy’s work as a matchmaker is a metaphor for how many people curate themselves today—through filtered photos, calculated bios, or subtle self-marketing. Song is attuned to how much our search for love is entangled with questions of status and presentation, and how difficult it is to disentangle genuine affection from those pressures. Watching Lucy struggle between her head and her heart becomes a way of watching society wrestle with the same dilemma.
It is also notable how different this film feels from Past Lives. Where the earlier film moved with quiet inevitability toward a bittersweet ending, Materialists is busier, more talkative, and more overtly satirical. Song seems determined not to repeat herself, and while her reach occasionally exceeds her grasp, the ambition is admirable. She wants to capture the contradictions of modern romance: its cynicism and its yearning, its glossy surfaces and its quiet wounds.
In the end, Materialists is not a flawless film, but it is a thoughtful one. It may leave viewers wanting more heat, more unpredictability, more emotional release, yet it lingers precisely because it refuses to be just another sparkling rom-com. Song uses the genre to pose uncomfortable questions about value, desire, and the subtle ways that wealth infiltrates intimacy. If the resolution softens those questions, the journey toward them is still compelling. The film is sleek, articulate, and quietly unsettling, even if not wholly satisfying. I would place it at about three and a half stars out of five: an ambitious second feature that confirms Song’s intelligence as a filmmaker, even if it doesn’t quite deliver the emotional punch of her first.
The Materialists Blu-ray offers a rich selection of special features, including a director’s commentary with Celine Song that provides personal insight into the film, a behind-the-scenes featurette titled The Math of Modern Dating: Making Materialists exploring its creation and themes, and a composer deep dive with Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast highlighting the score’s development. Rounding out the package are six collectible postcards showcasing exclusive behind-the-scenes photography from the production.
The Materialists is currently available to own on Blu-ray.
Comments