Materialists — Save the date for a witty but biting take on modern relationships

Daily Maverick

20-06-2025

Past Lives filmmaker Celine Song pairs glossy romance with uncomfortably sharp insights on modern dating in Materialists, where a love triangle is shaped by Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans.
For the second consecutive year, cinemagoers are being treated to a romance that is more than its shiny exterior and good-looking cast suggest it will be.
Last year, it was the Blake Lively-starring It Ends With Us, where the pretty people love triangle actually incorporated toxic relationships, domestic violence and repeated patterns of abuse. Now, in 2025, we have Materialists, which presents as a sleek and smart romantic comedy, only to pierce through the facade like a boba tea straw to reach the juiciest bits at the bottom: sharp-tasting insights about modern dating that can be tough to swallow.
Then again, Materialists is released by A24 (in the US at least) and written, directed and produced by acclaimed playwright-turned-filmmaker Celine Song. Song's 2023 big screen romance Past Lives was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars, and was celebrated for its nuanced exploration of the human condition, specifically the complexities of past and present love, which can exist simultaneously.
The point is that neither Song nor A24 sticks to the conventional. There's always something creatively ambitious and artful flowing through the veins of their projects, and Materialists is no different.
Though it centres on matchmaking, Materialists is no breezy and cute Hitch clone.
Lead character Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker in New York City. While she's great with a sales pitch about finding love, Lucy approaches dating like a business investment. All her behind-the-scenes discussions are about assets, value, probability and maths. She has no interest in relationships of her own, until the wedding of one of her clients — the peak achievement of her profession — brings both dashing millionaire Harry Castillo (Pedro Pascal) and Lucy's struggling actor ex John (Chris Evans) into her life. Who will our heroine choose? Will the film stick to genre expectation, with a 'love is all you need' message, or will it chart its own course?
Materialists doesn't dabble with its decision for too long actually, resulting in a final act that feels drawn out, and low on energy. Before that, though, the film excels at showing what dating has become in the 21st Century – a mix of mercenary entitlement and desperation, with marriage the end goal, no matter what.
Settling is fine; just make sure it results in you walking down the aisle and coupled up. In Materialists, Song has characters vocalising the unsaid, admitting their most selfish drives in ticking off this particular life box.
Viewers should be aware that Materialists is a romantic comedy in the same sense that restaurant series The Bear is considered comic. The humour arrives in momentary pricks. It's dark, sharp and entirely dialogue delivered.
Lucy's clients act like they're ordering off a restaurant menu, and while hobbies and political views may get a mention, the vast majority of partner wants are appearance-based and materialistic: age, height, body type, income. No compromise. No consideration of character. It's a shocking and sad commentary on what makes someone a viable life companion today.
And yet Song doesn't simply slap a judgment on these superficial priorities. Once more, she presents and then unpacks them, largely through the self-aware character of Lucy. Is it wrong to want financial security? Are you a bad person if love and hope of better days aren't enough to keep you in a relationship?
Johnson is an acquired taste as a performer, owing to her subdued delivery (especially in comparison with the warm and effortlessly charismatic Pascal and Evans), but it makes sense for the character of clinical and cynical Lucy.
There's also the bonus meta pleasure of remembering that Johnson was Anastasia Steele in the Fifty Shades films, a woman won over through lavish acts of affection despite her partner's constant red flag behaviour. Lucy appreciates demonstrations of wealth, but her eyes are always wide open, looking out and inward as she assesses her response.
There's a sense that critics may appreciate Materialists more than mainstream audiences, because of the film's cerebral and contemplative nature, versus being powered by passion in keeping with romcom tradition. That said, anyone should be able to appreciate the film's perceptiveness, however uncomfortable it is to look in the mirror held up by Song — one that seems gilded from a distance but is actually quite grubby and dirt-flecked on closer inspection, like even the most perfect appearing life.
Materialists may be more glossy and escapist than Past Lives, but its observations still ring true. DM