Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Director: Celine Song
In Irish Cinemas: 13th August 2025
In the spirit of Lucy — Dakota Johnson’s razor-sharp matchmaker in Celine Song’s latest, Materialists — I’ll cut straight to it: dating is a minefield. It probably always has been, even back in the proto-romantic days when the first two cave people locked eyes over a mammoth carcass. Song, whose 2023 debut Past Lives announced her as a filmmaker of delicate precision and aching naturalism, imagines exactly such a prehistoric meet-cute in the surreal bookends to her otherwise grounded, clear-eyed New York romcom.
You don’t even have to go back that far to see how much — and how little — has changed. As Lucy tells a jittery client minutes before her extremely high-budget wedding, marriage has always been a transaction: once paid for with a couple of goats, later a dowry, now a complicated tangle of emotional, social, and material capital. Dating today is a gauntlet of swipes, micro-decisions, snap judgments, and rejection — a process that only becomes more gruelling the longer you’re in it. In Lucy’s world, a sleek downtown matchmaking boutique, relationships are spoken of in the language of commerce. Clients talk about “asset optimisation” and “market value,” sift through “non-negotiables” and “dealbreakers” that often hide a dollar sign somewhere in their logic. (And yes — the clientele here is comfortably wealthy.)
If Past Lives refracted childhood longing through the sober realities of time and distance, Materialists takes a harder-edged approach. Here, desire is pressed through the cold machinery of class, compatibility, and financial calculus, producing something both fascinating and — at times — a little bracing.
In today’s anaemic theatrical romcom landscape, Materialists feels like a rare find: shot on location, bathed in a subtle, quiet-luxury sheen that’s worlds away from the overlit flatness of most streaming fare. It’s like meeting a six-foot-two finance guy who’s funny, emotionally available, and miraculously not unbearable — irresistible at first glance, but concealing a flaw or two.
Johnson’s Lucy carries herself with her trademark cool inscrutability. She’s a descendant of romcom heroines who are ambitious, cynical, and allergic to vulnerability — but she’s no ditzy charmer. She sells romance like a product, running every match through a checklist that includes income, family background, education, attractiveness, humour, and personal style. Her own heart, however, is locked behind a wall of practicality. Being a matchmaker demands a belief in magic — but also the cynicism to know that magic rarely closes the deal.
That cynicism gets tested at a client’s wedding, where two men re-enter her orbit: Harry (a slick, slightly miscast Pedro Pascal), a penthouse-owning private equity prince; and John (Chris Evans), her ex from her broke, chaotic 20s, still broke and disorganised in his 40s. Both men are handsome and decent; both make their interest clear. Lucy, unsurprisingly, chooses the one with the money. In a single flashback — her breakup with John over their permanent financial strain — the film condenses years of frustration and longing into a moment of raw bluntness. It’s also where Materialists is at its most original: unafraid to have its heroine say the things most people bury about money, desire, and the power dynamics they create.
The trouble is, Lucy’s not in love with Harry — and the film knows it. Johnson’s chill detachment works for Lucy’s guarded persona, but it leaves her chemistry with Pascal flat. Evans, meanwhile, plays John as a fantasy of the charming starving artist, a lovable shambles of a man whose messiness is never truly threatening. Neither man offers a compelling romantic pull, but that’s not the film’s primary aim.
What Materialists does have in spades is style: Song’s astute, lush compositions; Lucy’s covetable minimalist wardrobe, styled by Katina Danabassis; and, most potently, the blunt thrill of hearing the unsaid parts of dating spoken out loud. Song’s script — informed by her stint as a professional matchmaker — gleefully skewers everyone. Men in their 40s think women in their 30s are “too complicated”; women won’t give a man under six feet a glance. Everyone’s standards are as lofty as they are self-defeating.
The result is a strange, seductive blend — sometimes thrilling, sometimes frustrating. Its candour pulled me in, pushed away by its limp romance, startled by one line, numbed by the next. But even at its most uneven, Materialists has substance, wit, and the confidence to say what other films in the genre won’t. It may not be a perfect match, but it’s certainly worth the date.
Overall: 6.5/10
Movie Reviewer
