In 2023, playwright Celine Song made her feature film debut with Past Lives, which I thought to be one of that year’s best films. Naturally, it would only make sense to anticipate a follow-up, and this sophomore feature would be enough to give a sense she’s a new voice to continue seeking out in the future. She has not only a way with words, but an approach to romance storytelling that goes beyond what we see on the surface – but that’s also what makes Materialists a fascinating one. It’s a romantic comedy all about shallow people and their shallow expectations, but how that’s also another game to navigate in the modern dating scene.
Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a matchmaker working for the New York City-based firm Adore. After a successful match leads into a wedding, she ends up meeting a bachelor who might be the perfect match for her in Harry Castillo (Pedro Pascal). Harry, being wealthy, seems to represent everything that Lucy wants most in her own life, being voluntarily celibate and choosing only to date rich men. Things seem to change up for Lucy when by a complete coincidence, she ends up running into her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), whom she can’t help but love in spite of representing everything she doesn’t want in her life anymore. It’s a tough bind for Lucy, but this might be a perfect opportunity for herself to confront her own shallowness – which Celine Song is being rather playful about in here.
Drawing upon her own experiences as a professional matchmaker, Materialists feels like a movie drenched in loneliness. But Celine Song knows where that loneliness comes about, especially in a world where people are searching for partners who fit very specific categories for what anyone wants in a life partner. Most of Lucy’s clients are the embodiment of such shallowness, but Lucy herself isn’t invulnerable to that. Lucy thinks that being in a higher class position will bring her happiness in life, but having access to this money might not be everything it’s cracked up to be.
Where Song’s film works beautifully is felt in the nature of how her characters speak with one another. This isn’t limited to how people talk about their philosophies regarding love, but it’s also felt in the smaller interactions between all of her leads. But considering the fact that she’s dealing very deliberately with shallow leads in Materialists, it’s felt that much of these talks go over the heads of Lucy, with Dakota Johnson being perfectly cast to represent such shallowness. In these moments, she’s very funny, though Pedro Pascal’s romantic lead is perhaps where Song finds great strength within its casting. Chris Evans being the perfect foil who reminds Lucy to ground herself in reality also feels very perfectly cast, not just because of that charm he brings forth, but he’s also just a wholly likeable presence in a world built by shallow rich people.
Like her debut feature film, Past Lives, Materialists is also a film about the class disparities between the would-be romantic lovers in question. From Past Lives, Nora enjoys her own life in New York City within the upper class neighbourhoods, whereas Hae Sung remains among Seoul’s working class. There’s a lot to like about the specificity of Materialists, given the fact that Song is making usage of the more affluent sections of New York City in order to convey a sense of what people would want most in a land of opportunity. Even with the specificity of the story’s setting to New York City, it might only make perfect sense that everyone here feels that they want to take on something greater – but Song knows that the shallowness of her characters and their desires (save for Chris Evans’s John) would be an evident obstacle.
Of course, in a world where romance ultimately feels nothing more than just transactional, it opens up a door for something much darker underneath. Yet it’s clear that Celine Song doesn’t want this to be a simple love story, and a movie all about those risks that would come forth from reducing the qualities we love most in a future partner down to a series of values that we want to match up to. This is felt clearly in a very darker turn of events that causes Lucy to reckon with her own position, after one of her clients, Sophie (portrayed by Zoe Winters), is sexually assaulted by a “perfect match” whom she had set her up with. It’s a very sudden shift in tone, one that contrasts the bubbly tone of the world that Lucy finds herself a part of, but one can’t help but feel like there’s at least a certain bitterness that Song is expressing about the landscape for romance in the present.
This also finds itself tying into some very strange scenes which bookend the film involving cavemen. I’m not sure that it works as well as Song might have imagined it sounded on paper, but maybe that goofiness might have been part of what she was aiming for after all. Yet perhaps it’s also where it feels like everything is tying back to a view of what romance might have been like before matchmaking and dating apps became standardized. It might be funny, but it was a jarring presence in a film all about the relations between upper and lower class Americans navigating the dating life.
Being Celine Song’s follow-up to an Oscar-nominated debut feature, you can’t help but get the sense that she’s trying to make the most out of a blank check. That’s not a bad thing, considering the musings that she presents centering around love are what keep Materialists going, but it’s also much darker than one might expect. It’s a movie about shallow people remembering what they wanted most in their life, which might just be the perfect setup for a love story. Like Past Lives before this, Materialists affirms Celine Song as a filmmaker to keep an eye out for in the near future – but for all of its more cutesy moments, a bit more interrogation could have been greatly appreciated.
Watch the trailer right here.
All images via A24.
Directed by Celine Song
Screenplay by Celine Song
Produced by David Hinojosa, Christine Vachon, Pamela Koffler, Celine Song
Starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
Premiere Date: June 13, 2025
Running Time: 117 minutes
Cinema from the Spectrum 
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