Materialists (dir. Celine Song)
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 117 mins
UK Distributor: Sony Pictures
UK Release Date: 13 August 2025
WHO’S IN MATERIALISTS?
Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoë Winters, Marin Ireland, Dasha Nekrasova, Louisa Jacobson, Sawyer Spielberg, Eddie Cahill, Joseph Lee, John Magaro, Baby Rose
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Celine Song (director, writer, producer), David Hinojosa, Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon (producers), Daniel Pemberton (composer), Shabier Kirchner (cinematographer), Keith Fraase (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A professional matchmaker (Johnson) finds herself caught between two potential suitors…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MATERIALISTS?
When filmmaker Celine Song announced her sophomore feature, following the universal praise she received for her Oscar-nominated debut Past Lives, more than a few eyebrows were raised when it turned out to be… a rom-com. Not only that, but a rom-com with that most classic of dilemmas: a woman caught between the affections of two worthy would-be suitors. Why, most people wondered at the time of the announcement, would a clearly unique talent like Song opt for a narrative that’s older than the actual rom-com genre, to follow up a much more original and dramatically complex film like Past Lives?
As it turns out, Materialists is a very different kind of rom-com, one that only Song could pull off. With far more of an emphasis on the “rom” than the “com”, the film takes a much gentler and mature look at modern-day relationships and the nature of dating than most other rom-coms would take, which leads to a more profound movie than one might expect from a genre that’s been seemingly worn all the way through.
Set in New York, the film follows Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a successful matchmaker working for a high-end dating agency that prides itself on pairing clients with the right partners, based purely on statistics such as height, age and annual income. At the wedding of her most recent client, Lucy meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), a wealthy bachelor whose perfect stats label him a “unicorn” in the dating sense, but he soon courts Lucy directly despite her own vow to remain single. That same event, she also happens to run into her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor who’s working for a catering company to pay the bills for his dingy shared apartment, which is far from the ideal lifestyle that Lucy wants for herself or her valuable clients. Soon, though, Lucy comes to a monumental decision about what is more important when looking for the right partner: long-term stability, or just pure unconditional love.
No prizes for guessing which one triumphs in the end – it is a rom-com, after all – but that hardly matters as Materialists is more interested in exploring a side of modern dating that is, ironically, soulless. Song portrays scenes of courtship as though they were stuffy business meetings, as Johnson’s Lucy sits down with clients, including her own potential Mr. Rights, and effectively negotiates the terms of what someone may be looking for in a partner, all with a cold and somewhat robotic manner. In doing so, Song exposes the superficiality and stark lack of humanity in dating agencies in addition to apps like Tinder and Bumble, which similarly follow algorithms instead of hearts and consequently match people who may look perfect together, but in person not so much. One of Lucy’s clients, a desperate woman named Sophie (a scene-stealing Zoë Winters), experiences this first-hand in the most devastating of fashions, and all because she was paired with someone whose personality is radically different from the provided data, which for anyone who’s ever been on a bad Tinder date will feel scarily real.
It’s a very smart film that knows exactly what it wants to say, as well as how to say it and why it needs to be said. Song avoids many of the typical rom-com tropes with a grounded, mature tone where characters have rational conversations with each other about all sorts of things and come to mutual decisions like actual adults without descending into petty shouting matches. It is also shot and performed with greater precision than most other examples of this genre, to where at times it almost looks and feels like something Stanley Kubrick would have made – a fitting comparison, given how this movie bookends itself with a caveman sequence straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey (it’s explained, in case you’re confused). Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, who also shot Past Lives for Song, dials up the warm hues of intimate settings that emphasise some of the film’s most genuinely romantic moments, made palpable by a cast that wisely keep their performances muted to match the gentle direction that Song gives them, but still with plenty of room for empathy and compassion to shine through.
Most viewers will probably come away from Materialists feeling underserved by its pragmatic approach to the rom-com formula – to where even calling this movie a rom-com may feel disingenuous to some – but as with Past Lives, Song captures a fresh side of modern romance that offers few easy answers in a world filled with difficulties. The filmmaker utilises her gentle yet soulful cinematic voice for a film that puts the business of dating underneath a microscope and, upon dissection, finds little more than surface-level attraction that hardly substitutes for what truly matters in a romantic partnership. But Song also has the decency to gift it the heart that it is missing, in poetic scenes where even the most cynical lover would swoon over such delicately chosen words of dialogue, delivered by actors who can generate charisma and chemistry through a simple exhale of their lungs, and filmed in a grand and almost artisan style that radiates warmth and confidence in every single frame.
While Past Lives is perhaps a more original and more emotionally driven film than Materialists is, it nonetheless confirms Celine Song as an auteur with a profoundly empathetic voice that adds depth and sophistication to a seemingly straightforward narrative, even one that follows the traditional rom-com template down to the letter.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Materialists is a smart and sophisticated take on the classic rom-com formula wherein filmmaker Celine Song offers firm commentary on the soullessness of modern dating, as well as a beating heart to replace it that is boosted by some striking direction and empathetic performances from a strong cast.
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