Since the release of her 2023 hit Past Lives, writer-director Celine Song has been given one of the biggest challenges a filmmaker can have: creating a worthwhile sophomore feature after your first garners a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. Instead of going for something bigger and bolder, she’s opted for Materialists, a charming rom-com about a matchmaker (Dakota Johnson) and two very different men (Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal) who challenge her expectations of love.
Materialists Review
Lucy (Johnson) is a thirty-something woman making $80k a year. She’s politically on the left, was raised poor, and wants to marry the next person she dates. She moves through life transactionally, making her fairly well suited for her job as a matchmaker for the upper class. Her career has resulted in her nine marriages, an impressive feat in her field.
While attending the marriage of one of her successful matches, she’s caught between two men: her former boyfriend of five years, John (Evans), and the incredibly wealthy brother of the groom, Harry (Pedro). John’s an out-of-work actor with a sort of pathetic charm, and Harry’s… wealthy. That’s all we really know about him. Who will Lucy end up with? It’s rather clear.
Lucy is, above all else, materialistic. At the end of her relationship with John, she chastises him for being poor. She’s poor, too, but is frustrated with not having a wealthy husband to pay for everything. It’s a unique character flaw in that it would be hard to reckon with in most rom-com leads.
The thing is, Lucy is a fairly charming woman. Dakota Johnson plays her with her usual type of sardonic blandness, which works well. She closes herself off to the world, and romance is the only thing to free her. Yeah, it’s a little corny, but who doesn’t love a bit of cheese in their rom-com?
One day, her life comes to a crossroads after an incident involving her most notable “client,” Sophie (Zoë Winters). Sophie is special to Lucy because date after date, even though she’s a nice woman, Lucy cannot find Sophie a good match. After a date gone wrong, Sophie provides Lucy’s first bit of real conflict.
The Sophie and Lucy plotline is possibly the best of the film. It’s mature and upsetting. Winters is the true emotional core for the film, upstaging the rest of the cast with emotional vulnerability that the three A-listers could only hope to display.
This isn’t to say that the three aren’t good. Johnson, Evans, and Pascal are all pretty strong. Pascal’s Harry comes in to punctuate a key moment in Lucy’s life romantically and serves as this suave and charming man, the ideal man. He “ticks all the boxes” as a universally beloved “unicorn.” Of course, Pascal has this charm, so it’s pretty realistic.
On the other hand, Evans is supposed to play a salt-of-the-earth actor living in a crappy rent-controlled apartment with awful roommates. It’s hard to believe him in this role because he’s far too handsome. This is Captain America, after all. It’s unclear whether he can fit this type of role, and he becomes a little distracting. Evans’ performance is fine otherwise, but perhaps another actor would’ve been the better choice.
Is Materialists worth watching?
Evans and Johnson have an undeniable amount of chemistry, and the romance they bond over throughout the film feels meaningful and deep. The most important thing for any good rom-com to get right is the first syllable, and Song nails it. These two feel like a real couple, one that sticks through the ups and downs and works against the odds.
Materialists is a modest, well-crafted follow-up to a debut defined by emotional weight and formal beauty. It doesn’t have nearly as much of the beauty that Past Lives had. Though shot well by Shabier Kirchner and nicely directed, it lacks the resonance to stand among the decade’s great romance films. It’s simply solid fare, with strong romance and a smart script — a fun time at the theater, and perhaps not much more than that.
Materialists is in theaters on June 13.
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