Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic. I’m also living in a material world, and I am a Material Girl.

i guess I didn’t quite get around to reviewing this the first time around, but as the season for considering continues, I wanted to revisit Selene Song’s sophomore effort, which delighted me back in June. it does have audio description, so if you are weighing the material value of the film based on accessibility, you won’t be disappointed. There aren’t that many standout moments, but a certain visual cue that we notice about Pedro Pascal’s character in the third act certainly needed description for contextual purposes.

I saw another film recently and started going down a rabbit hold of appropriate 2025 films. Some things just feel like they belong in this year, where we are struggling, politically divided, or war torn. Certain films focusing on certain topics work, and others don’t. It might be easy to group Materialists into the latter of the two, and shrug off its haute couture attitude, but that very theme is what makes it so 2025.

The heart of the film is that Dakota Johnson’s Lucy is a matchmaker, taking people and turning them into some kind of algorithm. And then, trying to figure out which puzzle pieces fit. What do you want? No fatties? Under 30? Tall? At one point Lucy laments that half the things people ask for they wouldn’t actually say in public to anyone else. But, she’s still trying to match people together, like love is a business deal. I laugh at the concept of her working with me, breaking my stats into a love algorithm, only to find out that no one matches. I mean, if you’re hiring a matchmaker, you are hoping to move up in society, not down.

Perhaps that’s what makes Lucy so perfect for this job,because the job alone affords her a better income and status than she previously had when dating dead end boyfriend John (Chris Evans), who lives paycheck to paycheck, in part time jobs, with roommates. Clearly, Lucy wanted more.

She gets it too. She’s given the opportunity to live her materialistic dream, when a potential client (Pedro Pascal) shows an interest in her. She thinks he’s a unicorn. Perfect in every way. But is he? And, does that perfection matter? Or, does love still conquer all, even if it means financially struggling?

In this day and age when people really truly are fighting to get by, Johnson’s dilemma seems to stand for a Door #1 and Door #2 situation. Behind one, she can have all the material items she could ever want. But behind the other door, is nothing but love. John has nothing, he offers nothing of tangible value, except the fact that he loves Lucy, and she might still love him too.

Song, who previously burst into the cinephile scene with her debut feature Past Lives, which earned her an Oscar nomination for screenplay, opts for a more accessible story, but also one with a bit more frivolity to it. It felt more like a summer film, and its charming and beautiful leads work well off each other.

Pascal, who has been everywhere, is charming in his role. Evans, who is also handsome, rides on his earnestness that he had in Captain America. The awareness of the struggle, but the belief that something better might still be around the corner. Johnson’s acting for me has been hit or miss, and I think she’s well cast here. It is a role with just enough emoting, but nothing to push her too far. Nothing that would show a limitation.

I didn’t care for the ending. I don’t want to spoil it, but if Sog is going to be a visionary filmmaker with challenging ideas, she should make the harder choices. We got an ending that was a bit too glitter and gold.

Selene Song’s follow up to Past Lives is an interesting If/Then scenario, where one person has two choices, and neither is simple. In 2025, I wonder how many people would make the same choice at the end of this film?

Fresh: 8.0/10