Toward the beginning of “Materialists,” Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker for the New York City elite, sits with a colleague discussing the men and women of the NYC dating pool as though they were brands: is there a niche market for a particular woman, how does a man’s height affect his market value, etc.
This is how Lucy sees dating. As a matchmaker, she operates as a human Hinge, taking in information about someone’s looks, salary, and politics, and quickly doing the math to find another combination of looks, salary, and politics that would best fit that person. But she doesn’t really date herself. After all, dating is work – and rather painful work at that. ”I’m going to die alone,” she tells her colleague. “Or get a rich husband.”
The colleague scoffs: “Same thing.”
There’s a brutality to that statement that represents “Materialists,” the sophomore film from writer/director Celine Song, at its best. Billed as a rom-com but more successful as a take down of modern dating, “Materialists” is a scathing rebuke of the mechanisms in place that force us to treat dating like a job interview, highly critical of how the algorithm has ruined the romance of the endeavor. But, when “Materialists” tries to get a little romantic itself, it runs into issues.
Lucy spends the movie caught between two men: Harry (Pedro Pascal), a handsome, suave, disgustingly rich man (a unicorn in Lucy’s industry, the type of guy women tell themselves doesn’t exist), and her old flame John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor, sometimes cater waiter who Lucy dumped because they couldn’t stop fighting about money.
“Materialists” co-opts the aesthetic of a romantic comedy, especially with its beginning moments, where Lucy fixes her makeup before confidently strutting down the streets of NYC while an indie pop song plays in the background. That fizzy feeling continues right up until Lucy gets a call from a male client asking to quit her service because the woman Lucy set him up with, Sophie (Zoë Winters), didn’t meet his qualifications. The music drops out, and Lucy steels herself before meeting Sophie to give her the bad news.
For the majority of the rest of its runtime, “Materialists” focuses on why dating, particularly for women, has become so harrowing, mostly through the lens of Lucy and her clients. In their initial meeting, Sophie’s eyes well up as she tells Lucy that she doesn’t expect a miracle. “I’m asking for the bare minimum,” she says, looking like she’d rather bite off her own tongue than admit what she’s about to say. “I’m trying to settle.”
There’s no reason Sophie shouldn’t be able to find a perfectly nice man who wants to date her, but her options include joining a dating app, where she’s defined by her physical attributes against those of every other woman in NYC, or using Lucy the matchmaker, where she’s still defined by her physical attributes against those of every other woman in NYC. A few montages throughout “Materialists” show us the type of guys that Sophie is working with: a man in his 40s is tired of dating immature 22 year olds, so he’s looking for someone in the 27 range instead. One guy’s only ask is that the woman is “fit,” which for him means a BMI of no more than 20. Sophie – 39, generally attractive, generally smart – can’t live up to these impossible standards.
Sophie is not fully innocent, holding her own high standards when it comes to things like her partner’s salary. But Sophie, as evidenced by the quote above, is far more willing to compromise, desperate to feel like she hasn’t lost her value, despite what society tells women around her age.
Lucy’s big crisis of faith in the film comes when she sets Sophie up with a guy who checks all of Sophie’s boxes and turns out to be particularly horrible. This is a risk that women take every time they choose to meet a total stranger for a date based on nothing but a few pictures and some witty quotes. In the modern dating sphere, we take in the outward aspects of someone – everything that can be distilled down to a dating profile – and make decisions about what we think we can compromise on – height, kids, job – before we ever meet in person. We figure out who is “good on paper,” and we run with that. Because what other choice is there?
Song’s dialogue is hyper stylized in “Materialists,” but when it comes to the critique about dating, the dialogue only makes everything a little more fun – there’s a sexy sort of business to it all, particularly when it comes to the relationship between Lucy and Harry (considering Johnson’s past life as the star of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” franchise, every scene where these two negotiate over a dinner table is pretty funny).
There’s a kind of cool, flirty elegance to the way Harry interacts with Lucy, which is a great contrast to the way John looks at Lucy – that is to say, with pain and heat in equal measure burning through his eyes. But, “Materialists” spends so much time on the dating critique that by the time the rom-com starts, we’ve barely spent any time on the love triangle. The relationship between Harry and Lucy is quite developed, but John, the last peg of this trio, is barely in the film at all until it suddenly decides it wants to be a rom-com in the last 15 minutes (disappointing, because Evans is giving one of his better performances in years). It rushes through the romance as it tries to tie up everything in a neat little bow, leaving key character beats behind in the process.
“Materialists” not only refers to the way everyone is forced to act in the modern dating world, but also to Lucy herself. Lucy knows that money doesn’t lead to happiness – she must, if dying alone and having a rich husband can equate to the same life experience – but she also knows that not having money can ruin love all the same. It’s an interesting and honestly, kind of refreshing characteristic for a main female character to have. She’s materialistic, but not in a frilly, unserious sort of way. There’s no heat with Harry, but there’s comfort. There’s nothing but heat with John, but that heat has the potential to quickly turn to anger and resentment.
The decisions Lucy makes toward the end of the film resolve this core tension without ever really confronting it. “Materialists” can’t have its cake and eat it too, leading to a romantic ending that just doesn’t sit right.