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FOLHAPRESS – “Materialistic Loves,” the new feature film by Celine Song, already generated discussion before arriving in cinemas. Under the A24 production label, the film features the current heartthrob, Pedro Pascal, and is directed and written by the filmmaker, who was nominated for an Oscar for original screenplay in 2024 for the delicate “Past Lives.”
The story is simple. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a high-end matchmaker disillusioned with love. She lives by satisfying her clients’ high expectations, who look for men always over 1.80 m tall and with astronomical salaries or are looking for interesting women with a BMI below 20 and age just above that.
At the wedding of one of these golden couples, she meets Harry, played by Pascal. The groom’s brother is described by Lucy as a “unicorn.” He fulfills all the requirements that a woman could want. Handsome, with lots of hair, rich, intelligent, successful, tall, muscular, and single.
Lucy sees her, at first, as a potential customer. He sees her as a potential girlfriend. On the same day they meet, the matchmaker meets John, an ex-boyfriend played by Chris Evans.
It requires a certain suspension of reality to buy the idea that Johnson and Evans are millennials struggling to pay rent in New York, and this relative poverty is portrayed by Song in a caricatural way. John shares an apartment with horrifying roommates while balancing a theater acting career and a job as a waiter. Lucy dropped out of college and is living “at doing only one thing she’s good at”: putting together halves of an orange.
She is pragmatic and does not hesitate to mock love. After all, she is a matchmaker who looks for good deals for her clients. For herself, she looks for a rich man—and she says this straight to the charming Harry.
He goes to a series of very expensive restaurants, where he brings equally expensive flowers. After a few meals, they end up in his equally expensive apartment. The value of the property makes the matchmaker tremble at the base. Harry doesn’t seem to mind, even though she insists he can do better. He wants her for her “intangible assets.”
So far, the movie seems to build a good ground on which to develop. Modern love, like any aspect of life, is traversed by the dynamics of capitalism. But the script goes off track, with abrupt twists and strange loose ends.
Lucy and Harry don’t fight, they don’t talk. They only speak about each other’s attributes, in a tedious descriptive effort. There is no building of a relationship.
Harry knows John because Lucy takes him to a play from the army. Apart from a long and truncated handshake, the rich guy doesn’t mention trying to understand who that man is to his girlfriend.
The film’s dramatic twist comes through a sad setback with one of Lucy’s clients. Desperate for support, she turns to her ex, even though she is officially dating Harry. She has no friends or family, and little is known about her interests. The matchmaker is portrayed as the job she does and nothing more.
Even with the plot embedded in drama, the characters are hollow and superficial. John is defined as a failed actor who still dies of love for his ex. Harry is a rich man looking for an interesting woman, and the truly dramatic situations are reserved for supporting characters.
The movie was sold with a lot of hype. The trailers, which suggested that it would be a high-budget romantic comedy with a highlighted script, generated excitement. But “Materialistic Loves” does not live up to the hype it generated around itself.
The script is indecisive. It doesn’t know whether it’s a romance or a drama. It shoots in all directions and misses all targets. The performances do not compensate for the lack of depth in the characters.
It gives the feeling of wasted potential — the dichotomy between love and financial stability is, despite weak execution, a good proposal. One can only hope that a director will have more courage to tackle the subject again.
Materialist Loves
– Regular Evaluation
– Where The Cinemas
– Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal
– Production USA, 2025
– Direction Celine Song
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