Content warning: Contains mentions of sexual assault and spoilers for Materialists
“Love is easy,” according to director Celine Song. Yet it seems hard to find—which is why, in Song’s sophomore film Materialists (2025), New Yorkers turn to Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a professional matchmaker. Song’s first film, Past Lives (2023), not only received critical acclaim but possibly set a record number of tears shed. Lacking the emotional complexity of Song’s directorial debut, Materialists promotes the idea that true love will win in the end. Despite its cliché romantic sentiments, Song subverts the “rom-com” genre by exposing the hellscape of the modern dating scene.
In the opening scene, a cave man fashions a flower into a ring for his cave woman, introducing the key theme that love is primordial, instinctive to our very base nature. Making a not-so-small jump in the timeline, the film cuts to a bustling New York City street where Lucy hands a man her business card for her matchmaking service, Adore.
As for Lucy’s love life, Song pulls from the rom-com playbook, making use of a classic love triangle plot. Lucy has to choose between two men: Harry (Pedro Pascal), a private equity professional with a $12 million flat in Tribeca, and John (Chris Evans), the struggling actor living with roommates. From the start of the movie, it’s obvious that Lucy will choose John because, in classic rom-com fashion, true love will prevail over material qualities like wealth. This predictable plot is especially eye-roll-worthy when the broke guy is played by Chris Evans, whose Captain America aura and conventionally attractive features make up for his lack of income. The “imperfect guy” still checks many boxes for physical qualities and masculine ideals.
Striving to “check the boxes” for her clients, Lucy matches people according to categories like income, height, weight, race, and age. Song’s dark humor adds an unsettling element to her supposed “rom-com.” In the matchmaking meetings, Lucy’s clients express horrifyingly superficial expectations for romantic partners. For women, age and size are commodified—one of Lucy’s male clients says he wants “a woman in her 30s and fit.” Another male client introduces a metric for what he means by “fit”: “nothing over 20 BMI.” For men, height and wealth can increase their value in the marriage market. For one of Lucy’s female clients, a 6-foot-and-up man was her “non-negotiable.” After a stream of various demands that vary from sexist to racist, the frame switches perspectives, putting the audience in the clients’ perspective. Looking directly into the camera, Lucy sternly says: “People are people are people. They come as they are.”
Lucy’s message is not just meant for her elite clientele in New York but also for us, the audience. In our algorithmic age and Gen Z’s supposed sex deficit, many young people turn to an accessible solution: dating apps. A friend of mine said she likes to “play Hinge,” as if swiping through potential “short-term open to long” partners was the new Candy Crush. On dating apps, you have the option to filter characteristics like ethnicity, age, height, and education. In a CBC News interview, when asked about how she feels about the advent of dating apps, Celine Song said: “I am very troubled by it.” The matchmaking meetings in the film model a live version of how we privately commodify people from the screens of our phones. Finding your ideal romantic partner has become as customizable as shopping for a new pair of shoes.
In a dystopian fashion, the film exposes the lengths people will go to increase their dating market value. In the middle of the night, Lucy notices a scar on Harry’s leg. As she slowly traces the scar with her finger, you can’t help but suspect he must be hiding a horrifying secret. Later, Harry admits that he got a surgery, breaking his legs in the process, to increase his height by 6 inches. Height is so important to a man’s value that Harry views this surgery as an investment. Interestingly, Song does not necessarily condemn or criticize aesthetic modification as she encourages the audience to empathize with Harry’s decision. Rather, this detail to Harry’s background represents the uncomfortable reality that society treats people differently according to physical appearance.
The film also bravely acknowledges the risks of dating in a pivotal scene where Lucy finds out one of her clients is sexually assaulted on a date. Full of suspense, Lucy chases her client down the street to apologize. The client turns around and spits at Lucy: “I am not merchandise, I’m a person.” Song disrupts the fantasy of glamorous date nights at expensive restaurants by exposing the sometimes ugly and violent reality of dating. As a result of Lucy’s efforts to make a perfect match, Lucy’s client felt reduced to a marketable object and even worse, her date abused her as one. By showing us both sides of the coin, Materialists subverts genre expectations by toeing the line between romance and thriller.
While Materialists invents a new hybrid rom-com with its edgy themes and dark humor, it still remains within the confines of popular media. The film preaches anti-materialism and condemns the capitalistic scheme of dating by encouraging the audience to root for John, the struggling artist. However, the film motivates the audience to adopt this populist spirit by commodifying the very conventions of physical attractiveness that it criticizes its characters for valuing. For example, while Harry is unnaturally 6 foot, John is still effortlessly tall. While the film seems to argue that love cannot be calculated, the math seems to add up when two conventionally attractive people, Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans, pair up.
Despite the film’s contradictions, I can’t be mad at the happily-ever-after ending because I want to believe that Song is right. I want to believe that love is an ancient mystery that can’t be solved by algorithms and matchmakers. Materialists effectively mirrors the tendency of our modern dating scene: one that commodifies people based on their physical features and material assets. Underneath its Hollywood sheen, Materialists insists that instead of searching for the perfect partner who checks all the boxes, we should accept falling in love with a real person—flaws and all.
