Review: Celine Song’s 'Materialists' Asks — Is Love A Transaction Or A Feeling?

“What do you look for in a partner?” Is it charm? Education? Ambition? Emotional intelligence? A neatly pressed resume with Ivy League credentials and a soft spot for dogs? Or is it, more bluntly, stability, which in 2025 is often code for money, status, and whether or not he uses cloth napkins? Or is it as Madonna said. "Cause the boy with the cold hard cash, Is always Mister Right?"

Celine Song’s Materialists isn’t interested in moralising your answer. Instead, it holds up a mirror, a magnifying glass, and a Swarovski-encrusted ring light to the question, asking: what does desire really mean in a world where everything, including love, has become a transaction?

Let’s just get this out of the way: yes, it’s a rom-com. And yes, that term often gets dismissed with an eye-roll and labelled as“girl sh#t.” But as Celine Song says, love affects everyone. So why is it that when I say I love movies like Past Lives or other rom-coms, some man inevitably feels the need to explain to me how it’s “good for me,” but he prefers Nolan’s time loops or Tarantino’s foot fetishes? Sorry, sir. This one’s not for you, but also kind of is.

And we aren't forget that romantic comedies have been quietly radical for decades, smuggling in critiques of gender, class, and culture behind witty banter and pastel wardrobes. Materialists proudly joins this lineage, but does so with Song’s signature soul-searching intelligence.

After the aching delicacy of Past Lives, Song pivots from the soft-spoken to the sharp-tongued. But don’t let the title or the tastefully curated New York aesthetic fool you—Materialists is not simply a love triangle dipped in designer gloss. It’s a scalpel-sharp study of how men view women, how women are forced to navigate that gaze, and what it costs to be loved on someone else’s terms.

What starts off looking like your average high-gloss romantic comedy, handsome men, impossibly chic women, Upper East Side apartments that scream “economic fantasy”—quickly reveals itself to be the most beautiful catfish of the year. Song’s Materialists may wear rom-com frills, but they’re just camouflage. Beneath the surface lies a somber, razor-sharp dissection of modern dating, emotional currency, and the creeping fear of worthlessness in a society obsessed with status, stability, and self-optimisation.

She pulls off something deceptively tricky: using the expectations of the genre (meet-cutes, beautiful people, champagne and neurosis) not as a destination, but as a Trojan horse to smuggle in big, existential questions. Questions like: What is love? How do we recognize it? How do we know when it’s real? And more importantly—what is its value in a world that keeps asking us to prove our own?

It’s a simple question, sure. But also one that has plagued poets, philosophers, and people in therapy for centuries. 

The Plot: Or, The Girl, The Guy, And The Other Guy

Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a high-end matchmaker with nine marriages under her belt and one designer trench coat per scene, has love all figured out for other people. Her own romantic life is a little less...algorithmic. She finds herself torn between two men: Harry (Pedro Pascal), a finance bro in sleek packaging whose money makes everything easier, and John (Chris Evans), her struggling ex, a messy creative whose love is less predictable but maybe more real.

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What follows is less a love triangle and more a philosophical debate in an extremely good lighting. One man represents comfort, upward mobility, and a curated life where problems get solved with wire transfers. The other represents honesty, uncertainty, emotional grit, and everything Lucy thought she’d grown out of. It’s not about choosing a man, it’s about choosing the kind of life (and self) you want to bet on.

Style Meets Substance

Kirchner’s cinematography is almost deceitful in its beauty. Every scene glows, every surface gleams, but beneath that aesthetic is something far more disquieting. The apartments are too clean, the restaurants too quiet. Song and her crew use elegance to create a sense of emotional vacuum, love here isn’t lush, it’s something being negotiated over cocktails.

Fashion, too, becomes its own kind of commentary. Lucy’s wardrobe tells us everything before she ever speaks. Silk, structure, and minimalism worn like armour in a world where feelings are liabilities. The costumes don’t just look good—they say something. Which is kind of the entire point of this movie.

The Cast: Stunning People Making Stunningly-Bad Choices

Let’s talk about the trio that holds this film together, Dakota Johnson plays Lucy stunningly, with a kind of studied stillness—her performance is all interior, like she’s trying not to wrinkle the fabric of her carefully managed persona. Pedro Pascal is endearingly frustrating as John. He brings lived-in weariness and emotional vulnerability that makes you root for him...even when he’s kind of a mess.

But it’s Chris Evans who delivers the film’s most emotionally loaded zinger. “When I see your face, I see wrinkles and children that look like you.” If your soul didn’t briefly leave your body during that line, were you even watching? That’s a cinematic mic drop. Their performances, tethered by Song’s beautifully restrained script and Daniel Pemberton’s melancholic score, keep the film intimate even when the questions get uncomfortably big.

Love Is Math?

One of Materialists’ strengths is how committed it is to being a little weird. It’s not afraid to explore the emotional ugliness we all carry, the hunger to be chosen, the fear of being used, the temptation to settle for safety over truth. It swirls these themes with humour and heartbreak, never letting one overpower the other. It’s not just about love, it’s about what we sacrifice for it, and whether we ever get those pieces of ourselves back.

Yes, some decisions feel odd. The tonal shifts can be disorienting. The ending will definitely divide people (personally, I’m still spiraling about that Central Park tableau). But there's something beautiful in how the film embraces its contradictions. 

Final Thoughts

Materialists is marketed like a rom-com, but the joke’s on us. There are no big laughs, no musical montages, no grand romantic declarations. What we get instead is a film that looks love straight in the face and asks: Are you real? Are you enough?

Some will say it’s too cerebral for a romance. Others might call it too romantic for a serious drama. And they’d both be right. But that’s precisely what makes Materialists such a quietly bold feat. It doesn’t want to be tidy—it wants to be true.

Celine Song is now two-for-two, and with this film, she cements herself as one of the most exciting, emotionally astute voices in modern cinema. Love may not be easy. But watching this film absolutely is.