Midway through watching Celine Song's highly anticipated follow-up to her Oscar-nominated 'Past Lives,' a realization strikes: 'Materialists' is not the conventional romantic comedy its trailer might suggest. The new film, now streaming on HBO Max, uses the framework of a love story to deliver a far more incisive and thoughtful commentary on the perils of modern relationships and the commodification of love in today's culture.
Beyond the Glittering Love Triangle
The premise seems familiar on the surface. The film stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a young, ambitious matchmaker in New York City who finds herself torn between a promising new suitor, the wealthy and charming Harry (Pedro Pascal), and her imperfect ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans). The trailer promises a simmering, high-stakes romantic drama centered on this compelling trio.
However, Song's sophomore feature deliberately sidesteps this well-trodden path for something more substantive. The true heart of 'Materialists' lies not in who Lucy chooses, but in why she makes that choice and the cultural forces that shape her decisions. The film saves its most powerful revelations for the full viewing experience, a smart move that allows its deeper themes to resonate without the constraints of a typical marketing campaign.
The Business of Love and a Personal Crisis
Lucy's professional life provides the film's sharpest satire. Working for a high-end agency, she caters to an elite New York clientele whose partner requirements are a laundry list of superficial traits: specific salaries, heights, political affiliations, and ages. One client, a man nearing 50, dismisses women in their 30s as 'way too old,' insisting on a partner 27 or younger. Lucy navigates these shameless demands with a smile, treating matchmaking as a corporate transaction where love is a product defined by physical and financial value.
Paradoxically, Lucy applies similar materialistic logic to her own life, dreaming of a partner who is 'achingly' rich, yet feeling unworthy of such a match due to her own financial struggles as a former actress. This internal conflict is thrown into stark relief when a client crisis shatters her professional detachment. Lucy learns that a man she matched with a client, Sophie (Zoë Winters), sexually assaulted her. Her boss coldly informs her that such incidents are an unfortunate commonality in the matchmaking business, a bleak moment that forces Lucy to confront the ugly realities and potential exploitation within her industry.
Song ventures into this darker territory boldly, using the trauma as a narrative device to puncture Lucy's bubble and critique a system that reduces human connection to a series of checkboxes. This sobering subplot adds a layer of gravity that challenges the genre's typical boundaries.
A Modern Lens on an Age-Old Search
Ultimately, 'Materialists' is in conversation with classic romance narratives like 'Pride & Prejudice,' but through a uniquely modern lens. The film is less about the gamble of love and more an observation of what society has been conditioned to perceive love as: a transaction, a status symbol, or a path to financial security.
The opening scene, depicting a prehistoric couple exchanging a simple flower ring, stands in quiet contrast to the diamond-encrusted, social-media-ready proposals of today. This disconnect is what Song is deeply interested in probing. As the director stated in the film's production notes, the story explores 'a very funny, very dark objectification of each other’s humanity, and therefore a very real commodification of each other, as we go through this thing that we call dating. But it’s supposed to be in pursuit of love.'
While Lucy does reach a happy ending of sorts, the film offers no easy answers. Instead, it leaves viewers with a disquieting truth: in a world obsessed with material and superficial benchmarks, the profound concept of a soul connection remains deeply misunderstood. 'Materialists' is now available for streaming on HBO Max, offering a subversive and thought-provoking addition to the romance genre.