Materialists Is Refreshingly Attentive In A World Of Fleeting Choices

Celine Song’s film Materialists is an absolute original and apt film for 2025, where single lonely people meet potential life partners on dating apps or via high-end agents like Lucy (Dakota Johnson) in the film. Lucy’s clients pay a hefty fee, with a list of wishes from the potential date, who must be a unicorn. Most view this as a commodity that must tick the boxes for a life partner. Love can be the last on the list. 

The math that most people do before committing to a serious relationship. There is a quiet desperation, among the clients, where love is definitely not the first criterion. It is the match of height, weight, similar economic backgrounds and elite upbringing.

Materialists Review

The film also has the practicality of living life in New York. The expensive rentals, where being broke can be quite grotesque and “marriage is a business deal”! 

In this refreshing love triangle, Lucy has two suitors, one is a theatre actor (played by Chris Evans) and the other who is a unicorn (played by Pedro Pascal), wants to take Lucy on an Iceland holiday. He is a private equity successful money man, who ticks all the boxes. The best part is that Lucy and unicorn both share similar requirements from a potential life partner, regarding lifestyle, wealth yet the math doesn’t quite sum up the need within her to choose him for life. 

The film throws open the existential questions of mortality “will I die alone”? The insecurity that most people have and often end up taking the risk of meeting strangers on dates. Some have homicidal tendencies too. 

In this commodified world of trial and errors, there is vulnerability in the film that each of us can relate to as material success doesn’t promise love, in the luxury of candlelight dinners, romantic music and beautiful homes. 

Lucy orders coke and beer which offers a glimpse into her working-class childhood, which adds to her affinity towards the theatre actor/waiter over the private equity unicorn. 

The film one can say is a clever female gaze on companionship, self-worth and mortality. 

The clever writing that lingers are in these lines; “I am going to die, or get a rich husband, it’s the same thing”! 

Mohua Chinappa is an author, a poet and runs two podcasts called The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. She is a member of a London-based non-profit think tank called Bridge India.