“I’m asking here for the bare minimum,” begs the most frustrated client of professional matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson). “I don’t want to settle.” Her bare minimum, by the way, is a salary of 150K or above, a height of six feet or above, and a full head of hair. Materialists, then, is a romcom made for late-stage capitalism, populated by people who seek love like they’re negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. If you don’t think they’re real (one man insists he’ll only date a “20 BMI” or under), then you just haven’t met them yet.
Director Celine Song, as in her debut Past Lives (2023), draws here from real experience. She worked briefly in the matchmaking field, and so takes a knowledgeable and dexterous approach to its operations. It’s a film that works beautifully as an intellectual exercise. Ironically, it’s in the love stuff where it starts to falter.
