The weight of expectation is a heavy burden, especially in Hollywood. When a debut film like Past Lives arrives with the quiet force of a tidal wave, earning its writer-director, Celine Song, a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Original screenplay, the question inevitably follows: what’s next? The answer is Materialists, a film that boldly steps into the sun-drenched, often-frivolous arena of the romantic comedy, only to dissect its heart with the same sharp, soulful scalpel Song wielded in her first feature. Marketed as a breezy love triangle set against the iconic backdrop of New York City, Materialists is an intricate, ambitious, and ultimately challenging film that uses the familiar language of a beloved genre to ask unfamiliar questions about love, ambition, and the very fabric of human connection.
Starring a powerhouse trio—Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans—the film presents a deceptively simple premise. It’s a story we feel we know, a comfortable narrative slipper we’ve worn a hundred times. But in the hands of Celine Song, the comfortable becomes complex, and the simple becomes profound. Materialists is an intelligent, beautifully crafted film with sterling performances from its male leads, yet it’s an imperfect one. It’s an intellectual experiment that occasionally forgets to let its heart beat as loudly as its brain, resulting in a fascinating piece of cinema that one admires more than loves—a film that, much like its title suggests, is more concerned with the substance of things than their surface-level appeal.
The 2006 Rom-Com We Know, Rebuilt for 2024
On paper, Materialists reads like a pitch straight from the golden age of the mid-2000s rom-com. Imagine the poster: a polished Dakota Johnson standing between a smoldering Chris Evans and a debonair Pedro Pascal, the Manhattan skyline twinkling behind them. Johnson plays Lucy, a high-end matchmaker in New York City who excels at orchestrating love for her wealthy clients but finds her own romantic life in a perpetual state of disarray. Her professional poise masks a personal inertia, a dating dry spell that seems poised to break when she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal).
Harry is the rom-com archetype of “The Rich One.” He’s a dashing, impossibly wealthy private equity millionaire, the kind of man who doesn’t just own a penthouse but likely owns the building it’s in. Lucy initially sizes him up as a potential client, a project to be solved and paired off. But their connection sparks, offering her a world of security, luxury, and intellectual sparring.
Just as this new, glossy chapter begins, the past re-emerges in the form of John (Chris Evans), Lucy’s ex-boyfriend. John is the archetype of “The One That Got Away,” or perhaps, “The One Who Couldn’t Provide.” He’s a struggling actor, overflowing with soul and artistic integrity but perpetually short on rent, still deeply in love with Lucy years after their passionate, messy implosion.
This is pure, uncut Matthew McConaughey-Kate Hudson bait. The setup screams How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or The Wedding Planner: a career woman whose expertise in love ironically leaves her lovelorn, caught between the stable, rich suitor who can offer her the world and the poor-but-passionate artist who truly knows her. You can almost hear the soundtrack swelling with a top-40 pop hit as she makes her climactic choice.
But this is where Celine Song pulls the rug out. While all the genre trappings are present, she uses them not as a blueprint but as a Trojan horse. The film isn’t interested in answering the question, “Who will she choose?” Instead, it asks, “Why would she choose?” and “What do these choices say about who she is, who they are, and what we value as a society?” The focus shifts from the grand romantic gestures to the quiet, searching conversations. The conflict isn’t about dramatic misunderstandings but the slow, painful excavation of worldviews, insecurities, and the transactional nature of modern relationships. This blending of a classic premise with Song’s signature piercing look at the human condition is the film’s greatest strength, but also, paradoxically, a source of its biggest friction.
A Love Letter to New York and the Tangible Image
Before diving into the central trio, it’s essential to appreciate the film’s fourth main character: New York City. In a cinematic era dominated by green screens and sterile, placeless digital landscapes, Song makes a deliberate, gorgeous choice to shoot Materialists on 35mm film. The effect is immediate and profound. The city isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a living, breathing entity. The grain of the film stock gives every frame a texture, a sense of history and weight. The sunlight hitting a Soho cobblestone street feels warmer, the shadows in a cramped Brooklyn apartment feel deeper, and the neon glow of a late-night diner feels more intimate.
This aesthetic choice does more than just create a “throwback” vibe. It grounds the film’s philosophical explorations in something tangible. As characters debate the abstract value of love versus security, we see them in a world that feels real, weathered, and authentic. It hearkens back to a time when New York was the default setting for stories about love and ambition, from Woody Allen to Nora Ephron. This decision to shoot on location, with the texture of real film, gives Materialists a classical, timeless quality that stands in stark, welcome contrast to the often disposable feel of its contemporary genre-mates.
The Suitors: A Masterclass in Charm and Complexity
For any love triangle to work, the chemistry must be electric, and the dilemma must feel real. Materialists succeeds spectacularly on this front, largely thanks to two phenomenal performances from its leading men, who each craft characters far more nuanced than their archetypes suggest.
Pedro Pascal as Harry: The Millionaire with a Soul
Pedro Pascal is currently experiencing a career zenith, and Materialists is a testament to why. From the rugged survivor in The Last of Us to his much-anticipated role in Fantastic 4, Pascal has become a ubiquitous and beloved screen presence. He brings every ounce of that charisma to the role of Harry. As described by our own Dan Merl, Pascal embodies a unique duality: he’s the guy other guys want to have a beer with, and he’s also “the guy she told you not to worry about.” He is effortlessly charming, exuding a confidence that comes from a lifetime of privilege.
In a lesser film, Harry would be the obstacle. He’d be the snobbish, out-of-touch rich guy, charming at first but ultimately revealed as a hollow jerk, forcing Lucy to flee back to the arms of the authentic, working-class man. Materialists smartly sidesteps this cliché. Harry is old money, yes, but he isn’t arrogant. His wealth has afforded him a different kind of curiosity. He is drawn to Lucy precisely because she is not from his world. He’s not looking for a trophy; he’s looking for a new perspective, someone to challenge his preconceived notions.
Their romance unfolds not in lavish montages of helicopter rides and shopping sprees, but in long, probing dialogues. They dissect each other’s lives, motivations, and fears. It’s never entirely clear if Harry’s interest is a genuine romantic yearning or an intellectual fascination—a desire to understand a way of life so foreign to his own. This ambiguity makes him infinitely more compelling than the stock character he could have been. Pascal dominates every scene he’s in, not with volume, but with a quiet, magnetic intensity that makes you lean in, desperate to understand what he’s thinking.
Chris Evans as John: The Unexpected Heartbreak of Captain America
On the other side of the triangle is Chris Evans as John, and the casting is, on the surface, a fascinating choice. How do you take a man who for a decade embodied the peak of physical perfection and heroism as Captain America and convince an audience he’s a down-on-his-luck actor in his late 30s, living with roommates and struggling to make ends meet?
The answer is that you let Chris Evans act. It’s easy to forget, amidst the flurry of his blockbuster roles, that Evans is a genuinely gifted dramatic actor. He sheds the superhero physique and confidence, replacing it with a palpable sense of world-weariness. Yet, crucially, this weariness is laced with an eternal, almost boyish optimism. John is a man who still believes in his dream, even as the evidence mounts that it may never come to fruition. He represents a life of passion over pragmatism, of emotional richness over material wealth.
Evans imbues John with a history that we feel in his posture and hear in his voice. The love he shares with Lucy feels lived-in, a comfortable but painful memory that neither can shake. He is the embodiment of “what if,” and Evans plays this with a heartbreaking vulnerability. He reminds us that behind the shield and the stoicism of his most famous role lies an actor of considerable range and depth. The fact that both Harry and John feel like genuinely viable, compelling partners for Lucy is the film’s central triumph. It’s not a choice between “good” and “bad,” but between two different, equally valid, ways of living and loving.
The Center Cannot Hold: The Enigma of Lucy
With two such powerful and charismatic forces pulling at the film’s center, the protagonist they orbit must be a sun, a gravitational force in her own right. This, unfortunately, is where Materialists falters. Dakota Johnson, as Lucy, is the film’s undeniable weak link.
This is not to jump on the bandwagon of criticism that has followed Johnson since her roles in films like the Fifty Shades trilogy or the recent Madame Web. An actor is often only as good as their material, and Johnson has proven herself to be a subtle and compelling performer in films like The Lost Daughter and A Bigger Splash. The issue here isn’t a lack of talent, but a disconnect between the actor and the character’s journey.
The script positions Lucy as a woman who has become a shell. She’s so focused on the mechanics of love for others that she’s lost touch with her own emotional core. She’s going through the motions, a polished professional who has forgotten to ask herself if she’s happy. This is a solid starting point for a character arc. The problem is, Lucy never truly comes alive. Johnson’s performance remains locked in that initial state of detached observation. While she has palpable chemistry with both Pascal and Evans—their scenes together crackle with potential—her individual scenes lack a sense of inner life. We understand her dilemma intellectually, but we rarely feel it.
The character never blossoms in the way Harry and John do. They are revealed to have hidden depths and vulnerabilities, while Lucy remains an enigma, a polished surface that we never quite manage to see beneath. As the narrative fulcrum, her passivity creates a vacuum at the heart of the film. We are watching two incredible men vie for the affection of a woman who never seems to fully engage with the stakes of her own story. It holds the movie back from greatness, a frustrating “what if” that haunts the entire runtime.
The Supporting Standout: Zoe Winters Steals the Show
The deficiencies in Lucy’s character are thrown into even sharper relief by a blistering, scene-stealing supporting performance from Zoe Winters. Best known for her brilliant turn as the loyal-to-a-fault assistant Kerry on HBO’s Succession, Winters plays Sophie, one of Lucy’s matchmaking clients. Sophie is a woman for whom the romantic clock is ticking at a deafening volume. Her desire for love has curdled into a raw, painful desperation, and she is willing to compromise, contort, and diminish herself to find it.
In a handful of scenes, Winters delivers a performance of such raw, unflinching honesty that it feels like it belongs in a different, better movie. She captures the tragicomedy of modern dating with a precision that is both hilarious and deeply unsettling. Her desperation is not played for laughs; it’s a dark, compelling force that Winters absolutely nails. She is the film’s standout performer, which is a remarkable feat considering she is sharing the screen with three actors who have played Marvel superheroes. Her character’s raw, messy humanity is precisely what Lucy’s character is missing, and her brief appearances serve as a powerful reminder of what the film could have been if its central character had been written and performed with the same level of visceral intensity.
The Verdict: An Admirable Experiment That Doesn’t Quite Connect
Celine Song is undeniably one of the most interesting filmmakers working today. With Materialists, she continues the thematic exploration she began in Past Lives—the “smudged lines” of love, the roads not taken, and the people who haunt our present. The decision to use the commercial framework of a rom-com to explore these weighty ideas is bold and intellectually stimulating.
However, the film is an experiment that doesn’t fully succeed. The intellectual rigor often comes at the expense of emotional resonance. It’s a character study where two of the three main characters are fascinatingly rendered, while the third remains frustratingly opaque. This imbalance, coupled with a deliberate, meditative pace, may prove alienating for audiences who walk in expecting the breezy romance promised by the marketing. A24’s decision to sell it as a traditional rom-com could backfire, setting up viewers for confusion and disappointment, much as they’ve done with niche horror films marketed to mainstream crowds in the past.
That being said, a film’s impact is deeply subjective. As our critic Dan Merl noted, some audience members may connect deeply with Lucy’s quiet struggle, finding catharsis in her journey. Perhaps Materialists is a film that requires a specific headspace, one that will meet you down the road and reveal its true beauty with time and reflection.
Sitting here today, Materialists feels like an admirable, intelligent, and beautifully shot film that doesn’t quite strike the chord it’s aiming for. It’s a film worth seeing for its powerful male performances, its gorgeous cinematography, and its brave deconstruction of a tired genre. It solidifies Celine Song as a vital cinematic voice. But it’s a film that leaves you thinking more than feeling, a complex equation that you can’t quite solve. It’s a good film, by any stretch, but with the talent involved and the ghost of Past Lives looming, one can’t help but have hoped for something truly great.
What are your thoughts on Materialists? Did it work for you? Are you planning to see it? Let us know in the comments below!