Title: MaterialistsDirector: Celine SongCast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoë Winters, Marin Ireland, Louisa JacobsonWhere: In theatres near youRating: 3.5 StarsCeline Song’s Materialists tiptoes into theatres disguised as a rom-com in heels, but its footing is firmly in social satire. Less a meet-cute and more a slow, suspicious handshake with capitalism, the film sheds the gauzy illusion of romance to expose what’s beneath — spreadsheets of desires, metrics of desirability, and a city where unicorns are real, but only if you can afford them.Dakota Johnson, exuding the ennui of someone who has watched too many first dates fizzle, plays Lucy—a high-end Manhattan matchmaker who curates other people’s desires while quietly questioning her own. Her firm, Adore, resembles a consulting agency more than a love hub, where romantic outcomes are optimized like portfolios. Dating isn’t about love but strategy: a hunt for a marriage partner, with compatibility negotiated like items on a term sheet. Lucy guides her clients through this curated wilderness with the chilly poise of someone fluent in self-help speak, yet in her personal life, she seems unmoored—a soul navigating the very emotional uncertainty she claims to systematize for others.The film’s most electric moments aren’t in its central love triangle (though Pedro Pascal, all velvet glances and quiet wealth, makes a persuasive case for high-net-worth swooning). They lie in the film’s dissection of dating's more transactional undercurrents: physical symmetry, bank balances, and the ever-contentious six-foot barometer. Song pulls no punches — nor does she offer apologies — for the bluntness with which her characters discuss these matters. If love is blind, this film gives it a laser eye exam.There’s wit here, sharp enough to draw blood. A woman fuming about “settling” despite already compromising on hairline and salary is both tragic and hilarious. Meanwhile, the male clients fare no better, holding fast to fantasy women with BMI thresholds and age cutoffs, like the romance was a custom order from a particularly shallow catalogue of ideals. Lucy herself is not exempt; her desire for a partner who ticks the Ivy-educated, gym-toned, half-million bracket is portrayed with just enough self-awareness to sting without scolding.Johnson delivers her best work since ‘The Lost Daughter’, straddling cynicism and yearning with a graceful fatigue. Her Lucy is equal parts therapist, salesperson, and spiritual advisor — a jaded romantic cloaked in the jargon of optimization. When she finds herself torn between Pascal’s dashing financier and Chris Evans’s charmingly broke ex, it’s less a contest between love and money than one between memory and aspiration. Sadly, the film’s third act loses some of its earlier bites, opting for a mildly sentimental wrap-up when it might have dared to go darker, deeper, or even colder.Still, Song’s direction is a treat — visually lush and tonally agile, with Daniel Pemberton’s score and a dreamy soundscape giving texture to every charged silence and whispered half-truth. The film doesn’t entirely escape the gravitational pull of formula, but it orbits long enough in its own clever atmosphere to make the journey worthwhile.Overall, the film doesn’t redefine the genre but refreshes it — a romantic fable in designer realism, cheekily asking whether we’re after love or just better terms. Either way, someone’s paying the bill.