MATERIALISTS (2025)

Is it just me, or did Dakota Johnson look to have lost her way there for a while? Not that I’ve paid very close attention, as I’ll admit I am not a huge fan; not because I don’t think she’s a capable actress, in fact she’s very capable. I thought her casting in A Bigger Splash (2015) was genius and she made all the uncomfortable emotions flow with her young self seducing because she can. My misgivings stir from her sheer believability emoting her particular mix of modern ice queen with the heart of golden haughtiness. I liken her to the brilliant mean girl in high school that you knew would make it, deserved to make it, but for whom you felt no genuine warmth. This is harsh I know, but by my estimation, Johnson would probably shrug and not disagree. She owns her popular, icy ways. However, her talent for being a stone cold fox meant that the roles available were not complicated enough for the type of lady she can best play. Madame Web (2024) and Persuasion (2022) are modernized female fantasies and even Johnson isn’t cable enough to convince us she would be interested in the former’s cartoonish plight and not seemingly all in on the latter’s contemptuous snark. And so I primed myself to watch Materialists and Johnson being romantic with one eye trying not to roll and the other on a mirror, winking at herself. And I was wrong. As Lucy, a New York City matchmaker assisting singletons hell-bent on reflecting their value via a rich mate, and visa versa, she is the most modern of woman. Her flaws are not clumsiness or earnestness or geekiness or even plain looks. She knows her value and she’s ready to trade. “It’s math,” Lucy says when explaining her job and the martial alignments she makes being determined by way of a mental charting of youth, looks and money. It’s not cute or forgivable, but her so-called character failings are precisely what women and men have been telling and congratulating themselves for, well, for forever. Does this make her wise? Yes. Does this make her materialist? Yes. Does this make her a protagonist we can root for. Yes. It’s Johnson’s sheer certainty in what we all know is our collectively sad and relatable state. Lucy is smart and honest, almost (but never in my opinion) to a fault, and the men wooing her (Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans), see that she is the real deal and hope to prove their physical and monetary worth, which is as equally elusive to the men as it is to the women. Director Celine Song – Past Lives (2023) – beautifully presents the ugliness of our culture with a luminous and confident Johnson at the centre, clearly laying out our brutal reality, knowing things should be different without an eye roll or wink in sight.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: This is not a battle of the sexes rom-com. Pascal and Evans are equally assured and vulnerable and flawed as Johnson.