word by Josh Mabbutt

Celine Song’s sophomore work, Materialists (2025), is a film burdened with the challenging task of repeating the riotous acclaim of her first film, Past Lives (2023). Whereas Song’s genesis begins with a reflection on diaspora, migrant experience, and the problematic condition of being ‘the right people at the wrong time,’ her latest film is an outward-looking study of something else entirely.

I remember sobbing as the closing credits of Past Lives crept into view, my eyes and head under siege by a drought, which was fuelled by the fact that my tear ducts were unable to produce anything more. In simple terms, the film was a devastating, remarkably real accomplishment that gave as much as it took. Materialists, however, exists not as a film that is designed to sadden or emotionally cripple its viewers. Instead, it is a film moored upon the intention of making its audience think, feel and acknowledge the intricacies of the world around them. Centered around a love triangle between a pragmatic matchmaker, her wealthy tech-executive fiancé, and her passionate ex-boyfriend, Materialists explores how love, ambition, and material wealth intersect in the modern dating world. Dating, in any age, at any time, is a trial beset with inconsistencies and inadequacies. Song knows this, and throughout the film, she tests her audience to experience these issues through the lens of materialism. Peppered with philosophy and biting consciousness, the film audibly reflects a whole entourage of current societal areas of interest, sometimes with success and in some cases with disappointing failure. Whether it is the question of economic and social class, the institution of marriage, sexual assault, or the quest for love itself, Materialists tries to tackle a lot, and in doing so, does a somewhat admirable job of zeroing in on the dating world of today. 

Due to the nature of  dating in both modern and historical times, I have felt inspired enough to retreat into my own past and dig up the undeniable prose classic that is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813). Like Song’s film, Austen’s novel navigates tricky terrain regarding the world of dating. Yet, unlike the skyscraper-populated precincts of 21st-century New York City, Austen’s story prods and pokes at the landed labyrinth of 19th-century Hertfordshire. Despite their differences, however, both in format, context and influence, Austen’s novel and Song’s film share a similar governance over an unignorable condition found in the world of dating: the question of class and material wealth.   

In Materialists, Dakota Johnson’s ‘Lucy’ is a professional matchmaker with the objective of introducing wealthy, lonely singletons to one another to hopefully sow the seeds of love (or cynically, the conditions for a financially-balanced courtship and marriage). Vetting everything from height, to hobbies and the numeracy of age, Lucy is fixed on ensuring that each partner is suitable and secure enough to go the full distance. Like her clients, Lucy, too, is characterised by a materialist lens that Song uses to establish the real currency in this widening web of romantic robotics: money. 

In the film’s opening half, we barely see any references or acknowledgement of the working classes or the less glamorous sides of the city, and Song does this to purposefully embed us in the high life of Lucy’s dream environment. Only when her ex-boyfriend John (played by MCU macho-man Chris Evans) arrives on the scene by happenstance, do we begin to see the schism emerge in Lucy’s headspace, as we recognise the fact that Lucy herself is an imposter in the world that she now inhabits. Like John, her origins are not the high-rises of ivory-towered America, but instead the harsh and authentic southern hemisphere of the working class. Lucy’s affections are compromised, divided between the wealthy, kind, yet materialistic Harry (played by 2025’s poster boy Pedro Pascal) and her earnest ex John, forcing her to question her intentions of being an eternal bachelorette. Here, between this centrefold, Song investigates the reality of the dating world, where women are persuaded into settling for material security rather than authentic love. Lucy knows that her dream of marrying a man like Harry is wholly superficial and driven by the inadequacies of her past relationship with John, but because of this, she becomes both an enabler of this behaviour and, in addition, a victim of it. Whereas Harry offers her the sanctuary of economic solidity, John is Lucy’s most suitable match, and in his lack of material wealth, he is stripped down, naked and bare, with only his love on offer. Song sabotages Lucy’s equilibrium on purpose, hoping to evidence the vanity and material-driven conditions of ‘romance,’ that have trickled down from the capitalism of both politics and society. Like the media-driven frenzy over ‘broke boy apologies’ and a fellowship of culture wars commentary on the economic security expectations of gender, Song is hot on the trail of signalling the failures of capitalism and its restrictions on relationships and love. Lucy frames it perfectly at the beginning (if not with a tragic cynicism that is remarkably true) - “Marriage is a business deal. And it always has been, since the very first time two people did it.” This statement, albeit an echo of Karl Marx’s own perception of marriage as an economic union, champions Song’s intentions throughout the film. For some women, relying on the material security that can be gained through marriage is a necessary evil in a world where gender discrimination and inequality are real dangers to their existence and well-being.

In her acclaimed sophomore novel, Austen recognises these same difficulties in the albeit different context of early 19th-century Regency England. Whereas it might be easier to connect Song’s film to Austen’s novel Emma (1815), due to their shared focus on ‘matchmaking’, it is instead Pride and Prejudice’s attention to the conundrum of marriage that is of interest. Driven into a love triangle by Austen, Elizabeth Bennett must weigh up and measure her own aspirations for a potential suitor. As a study of the culture and conditions of upper-class dating procedures at the time, Austen’s novel uses Elizabeth as a reflective documentarian of the society she inhabits. Torn between the enigmatic and seemingly cold Mr Darcy and the superficially charming Mr Wickham, Elizabeth, like Song’s Lucy, is spun adrift, unknowing of what it is she wants from love or a relationship. 

For Elizabeth, her familial financial limitations condemn her to fulfil the needs of property that must be ‘sold off’ into marriage for her own security and that of her family. Therefore, through this prism, Elizabeth, like her sisters, is forced to use a materialist lens to seek out a future husband, valuing his finances, social status, and courtly behaviour. Here, both Austen's and Song’s protagonists share parallels. For Lucy, who dreads poverty, and Elizabeth, who is forced into urgency due to her own lack of financial security, dating is initially sculpted as a mechanical, value-sourcing set of objectives, inclined by material constructs. Yes, you might argue that Wickham’s charm is the initial trait that hooks Elizabeth’s interest, rather than his finances (which in the end are revealed to be in a poor state of affairs). However, for Elizabeth, Wickham’s attractiveness is still in itself a material property. She finds little emotional chemistry in their connection, but in its briefness, is magnetised by his good looks and societal cosmetics that shape him into something of material value to Elizabeth and others. Like Wickham, Harry is also presented in this way. His charm, handsome and rugged looks, and slick, wealthy bachelor characteristics are equally merited to that of his economic security. Song’s introduction of Harry is conjured up as a seductive lasso that enthrals the viewers into valuing him as something beyond his wealth, a social butterfly that is almost too good to be true. In contrast, John is given the laboured task of being dropped on Lucy’s lap, a sudden surprise, robed in a waiter’s garments, and in sad disbelief.

Wickham is evidently not a suitable choice for Elizabeth, and this is exposed by Austen at the tail-end of the novel. However, the question is: is Darcy a suitable choice either?? Yes, the narrative ducks and weaves through the battling back and forth of Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship, surfacing an intense intimacy that is often combative. But Darcy’s wealth and submerged self are enough to make us hesitate about their compatibility. Elizabeth and Darcy chip away at their own characters through their criticisms of each other. It can be argued that this suggests they both ‘improve’ each other and therefore equal a relationship made of more than Wickham might have offered. 

Despite his inadequacies, Darcy does hide away a more caring nature, and his own wealth is not advertised as his most respected quality. Yes, Elizabeth and Darcy’s union does equate to a marriage of financial prosperity, but it is ultimately successful because of their own compatibility and love. Austen’s aim isn’t to tell a simple story that ends in serendipitous love, but to wrestle with the materialism involved in courtship and dating during the historical period. By unpackaging this via Elizabeth, the critical, biting tone of the novel takes into consideration the motives of women who might identify the progressive powers of dating via material conditions, rather than the rose-tinted fantasy some might expect. It could be argued that Song’s film does this with a more expansive and critical exposure, and despite both the film and text sharing a ‘fairy-tale’ ending, Song’s film chooses not to bypass the more sinister concerns of dating. In the modern context, the film delves into feminine worries regarding safety, especially when it highlights the reality of sexual violence against women who must place trust in individuals unknown to them. Yet, the film fails to advance this theme any further, and like Austen’s novel, it is guilty of retreating into an idealised world without sharpening its criticism to the extent that it can. 

Materialists subtly interrogates the limits of liberal feminism in much the same way Pride and Prejudice questions the freedoms available to women in its own era. Lucy, like Elizabeth Bennet, appears to make autonomous choices, but those choices are shaped, if not cornered by material realities. Where Elizabeth faces the pressure of marrying for financial survival, Lucy confronts the illusion of empowerment within a system still governed by wealth, gendered expectation, and power imbalance. Both navigate a world where romance is inseparable from security, and both are haunted by the compromises that come with that entanglement. Song hints at post-Me Too concerns, particularly around trust and vulnerability in heterosexual relationships, but, like Austen, leaves many of these tensions unresolved. Instead, both works offer something quieter but more enduring: a recognition that love is never untouched by the structures around it.

Neither Austen’s novel nor Song’s film is Marxist in its conception or message. Yet, via their deconstruction of materialism and material conditions in the context of gender and courtship, these texts relay an economic clarity that is itself imbued with some Marxist parallels. In shelving romanticism, both novel and film climb higher than their peers, and evict the gesture of idealism, instead brokering truth from their contexts and animating it with narratives that reflect the real world. Lucy and Elizabeth do not share the same time period, geographical location, voice, or even identity, but what they do share is a position of perspective that offers them some clarity on how society and class conditions the rules we adhere to, de-assembling our desires as counterfeit attempts to solidify material security rather than love itself. Song isn’t suggesting that romance is dead; instead, she is briefing her audience on the things that distract and obstruct, and like Austen, she is looking to celebrate love for its difficulty to be discovered amongst the minefield of dating.