I did not like any of the trailers for Materialists (2025) when they dropped, and it’s not because they were poorly edited or had any particularly horrendous elements. It’s simply because the type of film A24 was trying to sell me is one that I very rarely find appealing: a romantic comedy.
Like with musicals and period pieces, I generally do not seek out rom-coms purely because the tropes and clichés associated with this genre — including random meet-cutes that magically happen, forced love triangles to push conflict into the story, and conflicting tones where everything is hokey and comedic until the third act rolls around — which were always big hurdles for me to overcome.
Rom-coms have never really been for me, and the ones I enjoy are either hyper-stylized arthouse indie films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Punch-Drunk Love (2002) or anime like Toradora! (2008) and Night is Short, Walk on Girl (2017). Despite my reservations, I was willing to give Materialists a chance because its writer-director, Celine Song, is responsible for one of the best-written and emotionally powerful films of 2023, Past Lives. I am thankful that I could look past my biases and put my faith in Song because Materialists is an absolute delight from beginning to end.
At first glance, the film seems to be a straightforward rom-com that follows professional matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson) as she gets caught in a love triangle between her ex-boyfriend and struggling actor John (Chris Evans) and wealthy financier Harry (Pedro Pascal). The film channels an energy similar to rom-coms with love triangles like Sweet Home Alabama (2002) or You’ve Got Mail (1998), especially within its first act. Yet, it never fully veers into that territory because Song strips away many of the spectacular and larger-than-life elements of those types of films, emphasizing the more mundane and quieter moments.
Materialists plays less like a typical studio rom-com and more like an extension of Past Lives, as this film not only uses similar filmmaking and writing techniques but also explores some of the same thematic ideas explored in Song’s previous feature.
Song has a quiet filmmaking approach, especially when it comes to dialogue-heavy scenes featuring two characters, as they are oftentimes shot from a medium or medium close-up angle where both actors are in frame. These sequences go on for quite some time and are only interrupted by cuts to a single actor, who takes up the entire screen and is empowered to express a wide range of emotions and flex their acting muscles.
It’s a theatrical approach to directing, which makes sense considering Song’s background as an Off-Broadway playwright. While it may not be particularly flashy or stylized, it still feels so tremendously coordinated and grounded that it often feels like I’m watching real people with dreams and desires navigating their lives instead of characters in a story. There’s no cheesy, stereotypical moment where John runs to the airport and catches Lucy at the last minute to profess his love, or a scene where Harry reveals some sinister aspect of himself that makes Lucy realize she loved John all along. These moments rarely exist in real life.
Instead, Song invites the audience into a reality identical to our own, where relationships have turned into a numbers game and can be created based on how many boxes you and a potential match can checkmark. For Lucy, love is an algorithmic system she can manipulate to determine the best outcomes for her lonely clients. Romance is strictly a business to her. This perspective even applies to her relationships, as she admits in a scene where she dances with Harry that her ideal husband is someone so exorbitantly rich that he can buy her anything she desires.
Luckily, Harry happens to be an uber-wealthy elite who desires Lucy for her outlook on life. They become a couple not because it’s love at first sight or they have that spark of passion, but simply because they mutually benefit from their pairing. While it’s unfair to say the two have no attraction towards each other, as in scenes like their dance at the wedding or the montage of Harry courting Lucy at various expensive restaurants, they have a lot of chemistry.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate to passion or love, and it’s only when Lucy discovers at work that her favorite client, Sophie (Zoë Winters), was assaulted by someone she matched her with that she finally realizes how essential those two elements are in crafting a meaningful and genuine relationship.
Once I understood that this was Song’s thesis and that Materialists was exploring similar thematic ideas about love and connection that were present in Past Lives, I became much more invested in the narrative.
Past Lives and Materialists both revolve around characters attempting to wrestle with their emotions as they connect with others. Whereas the former uses this theme as a jumping-off point for Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) to reflect on the what-ifs of their relationship and how circumstances out of their control prevented them from being together, the latter goes in an inverse direction and explores how Lucy and John attempt to overcome those external forces so that their romance doesn’t become a what-if they reflect on in the future.
In one of the best scenes in the entire film, John unloads all his emotional baggage, admitting to Lucy that he’s still in love with her and that he’s constantly frustrated by how much she manipulates his feelings towards her. What’s particularly striking about this sequence — aside from the fantastic performances Johnson and Evans deliver — is just how human and emotionally conflicted these characters feel at this particular moment. John is a hopeless romantic who desperately wants to be with Lucy but can’t give her the wealthy and exorbitant life she desires. Lucy recognizes that her materialism makes her a bad person, but she can’t change her nature, no matter how much passion and love she has for John. They’re at an impasse, the same one that broke them apart years ago.
At the same time, while this moment was playing out, I couldn’t help but think about a previous scene where Lucy confesses to Harry on one of their dinner dates that, deep down, she wants to be valued. Harry might check a lot of her dating boxes, but Lucy is afraid that she won’t be good enough for him because they both know he could do better.
John shares Lucy’s same insecurities, but he still finds the courage to push those aside to make a heartfelt declaration of love to Lucy. While Lucy may feel the same way about John, it doesn’t change the fact that money is a non-negotiable for her, the same way age, political affiliation, career, educational background, and other elements are non-negotiable for her clients. I couldn’t help but love and sympathize with Lucy as a character because not only are her flaws what make her feel human and grounded, but Song wisely makes these flaws present so that she eventually grows out of them through her interactions with Sophie.
Admittedly, I was confused why this plot point of Sophie being assaulted was introduced in the film and what role it would play within the overall narrative. Once Sophie became a more prominent character, though, it helped me realize that she is the heart and soul of Materialists.
Despite her limited screen time, Sophie’s few yet memorable conversations with Lucy teach her that her business-minded, algorithmic approach to dating doesn’t make her a love expert. If anything, she devalues people like Sophie by reducing them to checkmarks and numbers and only determines a match based on what stats they share, not whether there’s any real spark between the potential couple. Sophie, as a character, is used to criticize not only how Lucy views love but also how much of society views it, considering the massive popularity of online dating apps like Tinder and Hinge, which use a similarly logarithmic mindset to match users.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Lucy was a bad person, watching her open herself up and become more emotionally vulnerable, especially with characters like Sophie and John, showcases just how much she’s grown from the cold and business-minded person she originally was. It was immensely satisfying to see Lucy learn from her mistakes and outgrow her previous preconceptions of romance and relationships.
Materialists is beautifully shot, excellently written, and a well-acted film that feels like a sister film to Past Lives. It’s the rare rom-com that not only holds my interest from beginning to end but also one that I find so thoroughly riveting that I’m eager to revisit it in the future.
Similar to my experience watching Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016) and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), it turns out that I just needed the right director to get me to open up to a genre that I generally dislike. The fact that Song could get me to love this film as much as I did, despite my reservations for rom-coms, has cemented her as one of my favorite modern directors. I am eager to see what she cooks up next.
Review Courtesy of Timmy Lee
Feature Image Credit to Atsushi Nishijima / A24 via The New Yorker
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