The Perfect Choice

Materialists | Director: Celine Song | Cast: Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans

How do you find everlasting love in a world where everyone has an invis­ible checklist of the perfect part­ner? Tall, a full head of hair, a good income and even better genes? And for women, perpetually in their twenties, malleable and marketable? In the world of romcoms, love comes easily enough after the meet cute, the tempo­rary split and eventual married forever. But in Celine Song’s world of uptown New York, everyone has remade themselves into a saleable model that doesn’t last too long on the shelves. The men can undergo painful $200,000 surgeries to gain six inches of height. The women can do nose jobs and get breast implants. Still, it is often not enough. Perfect pincodes do not always make up for the lack of love, of knowing someone for who they are rather than who they pretend to be. When love comes from a place of freedom rather than fear, it doesn’t matter how it seems. It matters how it feels. Only in Hollywood though would woman have to choose between a rich “zaddy-du-jour” Pedro Pascal and an off-duty Captain America, Chris Evans. But then that’s what movies are for, right? To give you pure fantasy while also subtly giving us a poke in the ribs—in a material world, we don’t always have to be material boys and girls.

Celine SongChris EvansDakota Johnsonfilm reviewMaterialistsPedro Pascal