My Corner

June 2025

Celine Song’s Materialists is a romantic drama that never pretends to be romantic. The film follows Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson, who works as a matchmaker for Manhattan’s wealthiest singles. She arranges the love lives of clients with surgical precision, matching them based on earnings, family names, and desirable traits like height or pedigree. Beneath her calm confidence lies a restless anxiety, an unspoken fear of becoming invisible in a world that values women only while they remain young, thin, and pliable.

The story unfolds at a lavish wedding, where Lucy meets Harry, a billionaire groom’s brother played by Pedro Pascal. He radiates both rugged warmth and steel-edged confidence. When Lucy informs him over a slow dance that she only dates for money, he does not flinch. He simply asks her to dinner the following night. Their scenes brim with unspoken tension, blending cynicism with genuine yearning. Around them, champagne flows and string quartets perform for guests dressed in muted pastels, their silent judgments thickening the air.

Chris Evans gives his strongest performance since Knives Out as John, Lucy’s ex-boyfriend, who caters at the same wedding. John lives in a cramped studio, dreams of acting, and carries an exhausted dignity that makes his scenes quietly devastating. When he and Lucy reconnect, the chemistry feels lived-in. Their conversations shift from biting sarcasm to soft regret within seconds, revealing years of shared intimacy and disappointment. Watching them together feels like watching two people who want to save each other but no longer remember how.

Song builds the film’s tension not through grand declarations but through small humiliations. Lucy endures clients who call her standards unrealistic while men at bars belittle her work as transactional. She replies with polite indifference, though each dismissal deepens her quiet rage. Meanwhile, Harry courts her with grand gestures, including a spontaneous flight to Miami. The trip dazzles her for a moment before reality seeps back in. She wonders whether love and security can ever coexist without compromise. Song’s script is piercing, refusing to flatter the viewer with moral clarity or saccharine romance.

The cinematography by Shabier Kirchner captures Manhattan with a cold elegance, framing Lucy beneath towering glass buildings that dwarf her existence. Costume designer Katina Danabassis dresses Johnson in sleek slip dresses, belted coats, and minimalist gold jewelry, highlighting Lucy’s aspiration to be as polished as the world she serves. Daniel Pemberton’s score hums with melancholy, punctuated by pop tracks that evoke fleeting glamour before fading into silence.

Though the film’s pace drags in moments, particularly during a subplot involving a lonely client played by Zoë Winters, her storyline adds thematic depth. Winters portrays a woman driven to desperation by endless rejection, embodying a sadness that Lucy fears for herself. Their scenes together reveal Lucy’s buried compassion beneath layers of transactional professionalism.

Pedro Pascal’s Harry never becomes the villain one might expect. Instead, he emerges as a man unafraid of his privilege, willing to wield it to protect Lucy but unable to relinquish the power it grants him. Chris Evans’s John remains a tragic figure whose artistic ideals leave him financially adrift. Neither choice promises a fairy-tale ending, only distinct sacrifices. The film’s final act balances their opposing worlds with brutal honesty, refusing to declare one man superior to the other.

Materialists is not a romcom to watch while folding laundry. This is a film that demands attention, rewards reflection, and lingers long after the credits. Song asks whether love without stability is reckless, or whether stability without love is an empty life spent staring at cold marble countertops. The film’s sadness does not feel indulgent. Rather, it reads like an honest confession from a generation raised to believe love conquers all, only to discover the world runs on power, money, and silent bargains.

Few films have depicted modern dating with such biting clarity. Song’s script is not merely clever but profound, weaving together longing, fear, and the corrosive power of wealth with the ease of a novelist. Dakota Johnson grounds the story with a performance that is both tender and unflinching. Pascal and Evans match her intensity, each representing a path she could take, neither offering simple happiness.

In the end, Materialists leaves viewers asking which compromises they themselves would make. That question echoes long after leaving the theater, as the final image of Lucy walking alone through a silent city reminds us that choices made in pursuit of love and security often shape a life more than love itself ever could.