Swipe right for Materialists, where modern love follows the algorithm

In her new film Materialists, Celine Song doesn’t ask whether love is real. She asks what it costs. Money? More money? A lifetime of loneliness in luxury, or a partnership in hardship?

The Canadian director and screenwriter’s follow-up to Past Lives trades whispered memories for transactions, romance for risk and still finds something vulnerable pulsing beneath it all. 

Materialists is not a rom-com resurrected but a rom-com repurposed, for an era where compatibility is an algorithm and love, like luxury, is curated.

The first image of Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a reflection. She’s applying lip liner with meticulous care, her face composed and unreadable, lit by the soft mirror glow that flatters and conceals. We don’t see Lucy directly at first. Instead, we see how she wants to be seen. This introduction mirrors the premise of the film itself: the way dating profiles, salary numbers and superficial first impressions are presented as full selves.

Lucy isn’t rushing out the door in the way ‘90s and early 2000s heroines did with their pretty kitten heels; she’s curating, presenting and ultimately selling.

By day, Lucy works at Adore, a high-end matchmaking agency. She sells love like a luxury service, promising clients not soulmates but safe bets. In her own words, she’s there to “deliver” what someone asked for: tall, very fit, six-figure salary, a full head of hair. Her clients aren’t looking for a feeling — they’re looking for a return on investment of time and money.

And Lucy’s good at her job. Her ninth successful match has just gotten married when she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), the groom’s brother. A unicorn by matchmaking standards: Tall, handsome, rich and tasteful, Harry exudes the warm ease of someone who doesn’t need to try. Lucy initially sees him as her next client. Not so shockingly, he sees her as something else entirely. Their first conversation, set at the wedding reception’s singles table, is a verbal fencing match that doubles as a sales pitch. “You’re a luxury good,” Harry tells her, admiringly. He’s not wrong.

What follows is a love triangle of opposites: Harry, with his $12 million apartment and silk sheets, and John (Chris Evans), Lucy’s ex: a struggling actor with threadbare bedding, an Off-Off-Broadway resume, and the kind of sincerity money can’t buy. John enters the film quietly but memorably: as a disembodied arm delivering Lucy’s odd drink order — Coke and beer — a detail lifted straight from Song’s own working-class childhood. Later, he reappears rooted in a reality marked by creative ambition, financial strain and emotional unfinished business.

The contrast between the two suitors is not only written but lived. Song, along with cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, use light, texture and space to draw stark lines between their worlds. Harry’s bed looks like butter and clouds, while John’s looks rough, small, and far from the comfort Harry’s provides. But as cheesy or cliché as it sounds, it’s not comfort that wins in the end, it’s care.

Flowers become a quiet through-line in the film, tracing Lucy’s emotional arc. In the unexpected-from-rom-com opening scene, a caveman offers a bouquet of white, dainty flowers to a cavewoman — not as symbols of romance, but of trade, material and even weapons. Later, Harry brings Lucy a bouquet, too. His is an oversized selection of striking red peonies wrapped in stiff white packaging that resembles a luxury shopping bag. Neither of them really engages with it. A symbol of love, once again, has become a checklist item to hold on the side. He kisses her while holding it awkwardly in one hand. It’s a gesture for appearances, not connection.

The third time flowers appear, they’re stripped of performance. A small, white and yellow bouquet, handled with the same kind of care that mirrors the opening scene. No fantasy, no packaging. In a film so attuned to performance, it’s one of the few moments that feels entirely lived-in. 

Song fills the film with small decisions like these. Layered, intentional and gently subversive, the film unfolds with crisp and unsentimental dialogue. “You’re looking for a grave buddy,” Lucy tells one client. Another man, rejecting a match, growls, “She’s 40 and fat. I would never swipe right.” It’s repulsive, but it’s honest. These are the rules of a system Lucy doesn’t claim to believe in — just one she’s figured out how to adapt and survive. The audience knows it too. The movie theater was filled with laughter in scenes like this, where the impossible expectations, bitterness and realities of the modern dating world has become too real not to laugh at.

Johnson’s performance leans into detachment but never drifts into parody. Her Lucy is cold, careful, clever and emotionally risk-averse. Pascal brings warmth to a character who could have read as coldly transactional, while Evans (in possibly a career-best role) layers John’s decency with just enough defensiveness to avoid making him a martyr.

The third act wobbles slightly. A subplot involving a client’s traumatic experience adds tonal weight that the film doesn’t fully resolve. And Lucy’s eventual shift away from seeing people as products is quiet enough to feel rushed, but explainable by the weight of what has transpired with this client. Song touches on how dating the outer shell of a person is not the same as the core, and therefore, unpredictable. Dating apps share the same risks and conclusions. Height, age, career or any trait can truly vouch for a person’s emotional and physical safety. Even then, Song isn’t just handing catharsis on a platter. She’s asking us to reckon with what we’re buying when we say we’re “looking for love.”

Materialists is less about resolution than perception, projection and the slippery space between. From the start, we don’t meet Lucy directly. We meet her reflection. She’s doing her makeup, refining the version of herself she’s about to present. It’s a performance, but a practiced one that is controlled, composed and slightly delayed. Throughout the film, we don’t just watch her. We size her up. We measure her choices. We date her. We date Harry and John, too, comparing apartments, sheets and the subtext. The film invites it. It expects it. Song lets us see the outer shell of the characters, their height, physical features and socio-economic statuses first before diving in further. 

But by the time the final bouquet appears, something shifts. The camera lingers not on grand gestures but on what’s held, what’s handed over, what’s chosen with intention. The performance is still there, but the framing feels less polished and more lived in — like the reflection has stepped out of the mirror and, for a moment, held eye contact.