Celine Song’s follow-up to 2023’s Past Lives is disappointing if you’re expecting Materialists to be more of the same – exquisite slow-burn romance done with a sadist’s sense of deferred gratification. Instead Materialists is… a satire? An attempt at a takedown of When Harry Met Sally soppiness? A reckoning with Clueless, Bridget Jones or Jane Austen’s Emma, as if to atone for having, in Past Lives, made some sort of modern classic? I don’t know. Ask Song’s therapist.
What, ladies – this film takes aim at women – do eligible young women want? A financially sorted guy who has his own hair and a status job (finance), it seems. Tall, tall is mentioned several times. So when rich, thick-maned, rich, tall, rich and tall Harry (Pedro Pascal) rides into the life of New York relationship fixer Lucy (Dakota Johnson), the “eternal bachelorette” – brilliant at her job, lousy at real relationships – is swept off her feet. In the classic way of romances with pink floral covers, Lucy has an ex in the wings. John (Chris Pine) is a struggling actor who would take Lucy any old how. Decent John knew Lucy before she went all Manhattan. They were in love but now he’s not quite enough for her, though he clearly once was. She wants wealth, hair, height. Height is mentioned so often it seems like a set-up for something.
Song spins this threeway through several scenarios, making a few points about disconnected relationships and the way rich people live – chasing the elusive nothing. She does little Ephron-esque montages of men being cocks and later evens things up a bit with women being cocks too. But for the most part this is the Hollywood 1930s screwball comedy with all the screwiness screwed out of it. At one point, like a news magazine show shifting from an item about bunnies to one about a natural disaster, Song shifts the tonal gears with a serious side plot about the perils of dating – a sexual assault. Would Nora Ephron do this, Song appears to be asking? No, she wouldn’t… and for good reason. This side plot sits there like a turd in a swimming pool.
As for the performances. Johnson oozes nastily as professional Lucy and is more girl next door as the personal Lucy. It’s neatly judged, difficult and she pulls it off. We just about stay on side. As for the over-exposed Pascal, he demonstrates why he’s over-exposed as the very rich guy who’s so entitled he can’t even see it, while Pine does what he can with a part almost anyone could have done. In fact any one of them could have been replaced by anyone else – these are not characters so much as archetypes.
Jane Austen documented the romantic travails of a class that needed money more than love and – by a combination of luck and high moral standing – earned both. Here, well that would be telling, but as in Austen it’s by letting go of her fetishisation of wealth that Lucy becomes worthy of love and money, and becomes entitled to make any choice she likes.
There are moments that work brilliantly. The meet-cute between Lucy and Harry is particularly well done, the pair of them flirting and yet not flirting at a wedding reception where John is working as a waiter. Very nicely written, directed and played. And there are some very sharp visual jokes, including one about the very high quality of a rich man’s bed sheets juxtaposed with life chez John in a shared apartment.
But for the most part it flatlines along, familiar enough, OK enough, as if Song had been bounced into making another film but had been so long on the publicity circuit for Past Lives that she had nothing to give. As I write she’s working on a TV show, Damage, set in the world of e-sports and co-produced with Craig Mazin of The Last of Us (first season great, forget the rest) and Chernobyl (brilliant, brilliant). So expect something apocalyptic? Let’s see how that goes.
Materialists – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
