Following the extraordinary Past Lives, Celine Song's sophomore feature is a more commercial but no less intelligent romantic comedy about a matchmaker whose job is to find love for others � until someone disrupts both her professional certainty and her carefully constructed emotional life.
Song Returns
Song's Past Lives was one of 2023's most quietly devastating films. Materialists operates in a lighter register but with the same attentiveness to what people want and how rarely they're honest about it. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a matchmaker who approaches love with clinical professionalism until her ex-husband (Chris Evans) reappears simultaneously with a new client (Pedro Pascal) who upends all her professional categories. The casting is inspired � Johnson's sardonic warmth, Pascal's effortless charm, and Evans deploying genuine wit make the triangle feel like real people navigating real feelings.
"Song writes romantic comedy like no one else working today � not as genre exercise but as investigation. Johnson carries it beautifully."
� A.O. Scott, New York TimesThe Verdict
A worthy follow-up from one of cinema's most exciting new voices. Less devastating than Past Lives, but more accessible � and funnier. $85M on $25M: A24 has a star.
Following the extraordinary Past Lives, Celine Song's sophomore feature is a more commercial but no less intelligent romantic comedy about a matchmaker whose job is to find love for others � until someone disrupts both her professional certainty and her carefully constructed emotional life.