Where money meets intimacy and love becomes a currency, Materialists offers a subversive take on dating today. Brought to you by Celine Song, writer-director of the Oscar-nominated Past Lives, she returns with another modern classic in the making.
The story follows Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson, a sharp New York matchmaker working with the city’s wealthiest professionals. Her job involves helping clients optimise their love lives, a process that, Song says, can feel disturbingly transactional. “I was acting like I was a stock market trader,” she says of her own time as a matchmaker. “The language people used to describe a partner was the same as buying a car or a house.”
When Lucy meets Harry, played by Emmy-nominated Pedro Pascal, an ultra-wealthy, seemingly perfect beau, and reconnects with her financially challenged ex John, cue Chris Evans, she is forced to confront the gap between her professional ideals and what she truly wants. Dakota says of her character, “It’s so complex. Lucy has so many different dynamics in the film. She’s a bit of a chameleon. You’re always wondering which version of her is the truth-which I thought was so fun to play.” Evans describes John as someone stuck but sincere, “He is 37 and living a bit of a college lifestyle. He has roommates, he’s broke. But he’s very much in love with Lucy.” He continues, “There are those people you meet in life that you just compare everyone else against. That’s John’s dynamic with her.” Charm extraordinaire, as Harry, Pascal leans into his magnetic charisma without making him a cliché, “It was really important for Harry not to be a villain or a joke,” says Song. “Pedro plays him so vulnerably. You can’t help but love him.”
“Even if the love I have ends, I’m always going to know that love is possible. It exists.”
Materialists is both a modern romance and a critique of how dating has been shaped by apps and algorithms in today’s society, but it does also hold space for genuine emotion.
The film features a score by Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), cinematography by Shabier Kirchner (Small Axe, Past Lives), and production design by Anthony Gasparro. Produced by David Hinojosa, Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, Materialists is released by A24 and opens in cinemas on the 13th of June.
For further information a24films.com.
