In 2023, Celine Song dazzled audiences with her delicate yet devastating exploration of childhood sweethearts separated by time, culture, and geography in Past Lives, earning an Oscar nod for Best Original Screenplay in the process. But while the writer-director debuted with a bang, her much-anticipated rom-com follow-up, Materialists, suffers from a classic case of sophomore slump.
It centres on Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a 30-something New York matchmaker who caters to the city’s elites. Working for a glamorous agency, she operates with a dispassionate, mathematical perspective on love and relationships. For Lucy and her colleagues, dating (and eventually marriage) boils down to a value exchange, with superficial assets, like height and income, being the only currency that matters.
Her clients are mostly intolerable. The men are arrogant and shallow, the women are entitled and demanding. And despite Lucy’s effectiveness as a matchmaker and eagerness to deliver, she’s growing frustrated with her clients’ unrealistic expectations. This is especially true for Sophie (Zoe Winters), whom Lucy admits to a colleague “has no place in the market”.
Professional vexations aside, Lucy is celebrating a win: one of her curated couples is tying the knot. At the wedding, she meets the uber-wealthy and smolderingly suave Harry (Pedro Pascal), brother of the groom, who’s interested in her, rather than her services. But their flirtation is swiftly interrupted by the appearance of Lucy’s ex, John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor who’s eeking out a living as a cater-waiter. Through this pseudo love triangle, Lucy begins to confront her cynical views on romantic relationships.
What’s immediately obvious is that Materialists lacks the subtlety and naturalism of Past Lives. Much of the film sees Lucy waxing lyrical about the hard truths of romantic relationships, rather than exploring the subject through engaging and convincing drama.
It has some humorous and well-observed moments, but the writing is often synthetic and clunky. We’re hyper-aware of every conversation’s purpose in Song’s project, because each one addresses the film’s themes so directly. Sometimes, it feels as though we’re watching a talk show on the trials of modern dating, rather than a portrait of a woman in ideological crisis.
The characters also come off as overly self-aware and too willing to divulge analyses of their behaviours, which robs exchanges of tension and nuance. In one scene, John apologises for lashing out at Lucy, saying, “I’m just giving you a hard time because I’m embarrassed.” And in a flashback, after venting that she doesn’t want to argue about money because it makes her feel like her parents, Lucy tells John, “I don’t want to hate you because you’re poor. But right now, I do, and it makes me hate myself.”
From this contrived dialogue, the principal actors struggle to mould organic performances, especially Johnson, whose line delivery has a distinct rehearsed quality. While this is less problematic in the front half, reflecting Lucy’s superficial and transactional perspective on human relationships, it’s jarring in later scenes, as she begins to realise the importance of the ineffable currents of romantic connection.
The strongest parts of Materialists are not Lucy’s interactions with Harry or John, but those with Sophie, who Lucy unwittingly places in a dangerous situation with another client. Winters’ performance is probably the best of the bunch, bringing a complex mix of comedy and pathos to her role as the victim of the extreme consequences of a philosophy that commodifies people. Audiences might be left wondering why so much attention is given to the relatively soulless love triangle, and not enough to this genuinely engaging and important facet of the story.
The same applies to a handful of John’s scenes. The ones set at his grimy, cramped apartment serve as little sucker-punches of unpolished reality amongst a tapestry of glossy ballrooms, luxe restaurants, and high-ceilinged penthouses, and they’re masterfully staged to deliver concentrated doses of claustrophobic humour. Though it makes sense that the film is set mostly in the vapid realm of high society, I can’t help but wish Song had placed more of the proceedings in John’s world, as she does it so well.
As with her debut outing, Song’s lush cinematic style is winning. Here, she embraces the ambience of classic rom-coms from the late 90s and 00s, with shots of bustling New York boulevards and glossy offices populated by extravagantly-dressed, high-heeled women. But unlike these fluffy flicks, Song isn’t afraid to address the more brutal and unfortunately very real aspects of the modern matchmaking arena, where women over 40 and men under six feet are essentially viewed as inferior merchandise. However, while Materialists boasts the insight to identify these issues, it lacks the dramatic complexity to explore them sufficiently and engagingly.
Materialists debuts in UK cinemas on 15th August 2025.
All images courtesy of Sony Pictures UK
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