Materialists ★★★

Availability: Showing widely in theaters nationally and internationally. Production company A24 films go to Max, usually 4-5 months after theater release. Streaming and online purchase therefore expected in October or November. See JustWatch here for up-to-date online options.

Love Is Easy, Dating Is Hard

Dakota Johnson’s Lucy has her job as a New York City matchmaker down to a tee. She’s a cool, calm, impeccably dressed and put together (we see her taking lots of time applying her lipstick) $80,000/year agency recruiter. Her technique is to match prospective partners based on the number of boxes in common each one checks. The entire office celebrates—with cake and speeches—Lucy’s ninth wedding, that is, the ninth time she has so perfectly matched a couple that they end up getting married (shades of “The Bachelor” reality TV franchise).

Can matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson), of modest means but charming, and wealthy "10 out of 10" Harry (Pedro Pascal) find happiness together if they don't check the same boxes?

But what’s in it for Lucy? Harry (Pedro Pascal of TV’s “The Last of Us”) comes along, courtesy of the wedding singles table. He is, as Lucy tells him, 6 feet tall (or is he?), insanely wealthy (a $14 million incredibly tasteful and incredibly boring apartment), refined, and nice. He’s a 10, she adds, in her business, a unicorn. According to the company’s methodology, Harry cannot possibly date Lucy. She’s of modest means, he’s rich; she’s from a dysfunctional family, he’s from a solid one; she hasn’t finished college, he’s well-educated. He could not possibly value her—and there’s the loaded word.

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He could not possibly value her—and there’s the loaded word.

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Does “value” mean to appreciate, even to love? Or does “value” refer to a business evaluation? Lucy is nothing if not transactional. As she explains to her clients, that’s the hard part of dating. And while she tells Harry love is easy, she seems not to understand it.

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This second feature film written and directed by Celine Song checks a lot of boxes in common with her first, the subtle and captivating “Past Lives” of 2 years ago.

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This second feature film written and directed by Celine Song checks a lot of boxes in common with her first, the subtle and captivating “Past Lives” of 2 years ago. Both feature a female lead torn between a past love with a story and a current partner. In Song’s first film, Nora, a Korean-Canadian (like Song), is married to a Jewish-American she met at a writers’ colony. Then, a puppy love of long ago, a boy she did not want to leave when her family moved from Korea to Canada, comes back into her life and awakens in her the past they share, including their common mother tongue. In “Materialists,” Lucy runs into her old lover, her partner of more than 5 years, John, at that same ninth wedding. John (Chris Evans, aka Captain America), a struggling actor, is a server for the catering company, plunking down in front of her what he knows is her drink of choice, Coke and beer, when the words are barely out of her mouth. They check most of the same boxes. Unlike Harry, John comes from a poor, dysfunctional family; he and Lucy met as budding actors. They have a shared story.

So near and yet so far: Can struggling actor John (Chris Evans) convince transactional Lucy (Johnson) that they should get back together? Or is she simply too cold?

In contrast to her first film, Song’s script here is predictable. It’s not a spoiler to disclose—because it’s obvious from the beginning—that Lucy will not end up with Harry, that she will go back to John. It’s not so much about the boxes; it’s about love. A problem with “Materialists” is that there is no chemistry between any of the characters—certainly not between Harry and Lucy, we’re supposed to understand that—but also not between John and Lucy. There’s some intense kissing that may be intended to stand in for love, but one just doesn’t feel it. John tells Lucy she’s cold, and she is. As portrayed by Johnson, the “materialist” in Lucy never seems to be superseded by emotion, by passion.

"There's some intense kissing that may be intended to stand in for love"

as on display between Lucy (Johnson)

and John (Evans), but there is

no chemistry between the two ex-lovers.

Language is a dominant theme in both of Song’s films. She plays with the role of language in the entanglement of our lives with others. In “Past Lives,” it’s the tongue in which one speaks, thinks, and feels. “What language do you dream in?” In “Materialists,” it’s the language of corporate matchmaking, or matchmaking as Lucy practices it. Her words are precise and clever. She knows what to say to every agency recruit, to make that person feel, yes, valued, and what to say about every prospective match, to make those two people seem desirable—and valuable—to each other.

This language of matchmaking, even its vocabulary, makes the overly long set-up reasonably entertaining, more so than the last half of the film. It is what’s interesting about an otherwise too-pat script and actors lacking passion and commitment. That first hour also contains the comedy, as Lucy runs through a battery of recruits asking for impossible matches, among them, the man in his 40s who decides 21-23 year-olds are too naïve and wants someone more mature. Lucy proposes a 34-year-old (“no”), then a 29-year-old (“that’s almost 30”), and finally, he says, “27.”

Song’s film begins and ends with a caveman and a cavewoman showing their love for each other. She seems to be saying that love is eternal, that it transcends transaction and boxes. But the cave-couple add-on is frankly a bit silly as well as likely historically inaccurate.

There are two very different ways to assess Song’s film. Given the cave couple and their direct link to Lucy and John’s romance, and how the plot is constructed and plays out, it would seem here that Song, in contrast to “Past Lives,” intended to create a traditional rom-com, and for the Lucy/John relationship to be understood as rekindled true love. If that was her goal, she has failed. It is also possible that the cave people silliness is just that—misdirection, irony, and humor, not to be taken seriously—and that “Materialists” is Song’s second effort, worthy if not as compelling as the first, at demonstrating the ambiguities, doubts, questions, and insecurities that shape and inhabit romance and haunt contemporary relationships.

Either way, a near miss.

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She says: Although they look different, Song’s first 2 films deal too much with the same material. She seems to have used up the good stuff in her first one.

He says: A talented film-maker with a dark sensibility. Even when imperfect, her films probe the human experience in a fresh, and often uncomfortable, way. Dating is easy, love is hard.

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Date: 2025

Director: Celine Song

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Pablo Pascal, Chris Evans

Country: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 116 minutes

Other Awards: 1 nomination to date