Movies we watched: Materialist (2025)
A deep dive into the 2025 film Materialists. This is a transcript to a video essay that will be posted here once it is filmed produced for your entertainment. Consider this BTS. Enjoy.
(Introduction) “Romance is dead but perfectionism is thriving.
We do not fall in love anymore. We curate. We audition. We self-brand. In the era of dream jobs, minimal skincare, and moral performance, romance hasn’t vanished — it’s just become another design challenge.
You know how instagram was once a place of random expression but has become more of an online resume. A lot of us are still waiting to get paid for our performance of self to prove we exist as our authentic, most well received and deserving selves.
And A24’s latest, Materialists, knows this about us and is teasing us about it. Maybe at the heart of the joke is a question, “when do you stop performing and just live a life all your own?”
Taking what I can get from the odd pacing of this often outspoken but chopped storyline, Materialists is a film that both critiques and indulges the culture it mirrors — and depending on your bandwidth for irony, it either hits hard or misses entirely.
(Body paragraph one) Where do our ideals come from? What even is romance anymore?
What Even Is Romance Anymore?
12th Century – Courtly Love (Medieval France):
Romantic love first entered Western consciousness through courtly love, a literary and aristocratic tradition that emerged in medieval southern France. Love was portrayed as a noble pursuit, often secret and unrequited, elevating emotional yearning as a spiritual experience. It was about the performance of love—adoration from afar, suffering in silence, proving devotion.
17th–18th Century – The Rise of Sentimental Love (France & England):
In Enlightenment Europe, especially France, romance shifted into sentimental love. Novels like Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) popularized the idea that romantic feelings were authentic, deep, and morally pure. This era is where we get the roots of “love marriages” instead of arranged ones—love as both destiny and virtue.
19th Century – Victorian Restraint & Idealized Femininity (England):
Romance became highly gendered and restrained. Women were put on pedestals—romantic love was about protection and idealization, not mutual liberation. Think Jane Austen and the Brontës. Passion was permissible, but only when it conformed to duty or sacrifice. Love was a contract—and the drama came from propriety clashing with desire.
Early 20th Century – Hollywood & Heterosexual Happy Endings (USA):
Cinema revolutionized the visual narrative of romance. From Gone with the Wind (1939) to Roman Holiday (1953), love became a spectacle. The happy ending became the standard. Romance was no longer just emotional—it was aesthetic, glamorous, and often one-size-fits-all. Women were prizes; men were saviors.
1970s–1990s – Love, Sex, and Capitalism Collide (Global West):
With second-wave feminism, the sexual revolution, and shifting gender roles, romance became more complicated. Films like When Harry Met Sally and Pretty Woman still fed idealism, but with new rules: love had to survive irony, independence, and class differences. Sex became part of the love plot—but always tidy and redemptive.
2000s–Now – Postmodern Romance, Performative Intimacy & Digital Desire:
Love is now shaped by dating apps, image curation, trauma discourse, and niche identity politics. We don’t just want partners—we want mirror reflections, emotional safety, ethical consistency, and financial compatibility. The stakes are higher, the choices infinite, and our expectations increasingly contradictory.
Whatta evolution.This is purely observation.
I have been falling for this couple via instagram reels, Levi and William. After watching their content, I am asking myself why am I not a busty red head with a loving doting boyfriend named William. Luckily, I am a single woman so I don’t have to question the quality of my romantic relationship to someone. However, I am now looking for a partner with a new set of ideals: “must love cooking, can sew my clothes, and insists on celebrating me.” (mommy? daddy? when are you coming home?) Yikes. Social media performances have started to shape our ideas of what is possible— not always what’s sustainable for us but— what we dream of. And we love dreams and we love being sold fantasies, that’s why the reality of celebrities being just like us hurts so hard. We need them to be what we dreamed them to be, beyond what is possible or true. We need them to be positively perfect. I digress. We used to only fantasize about being in the perfect relationship or having a beautiful wedding— now we can watch others perform it (true or not). Changing our definition on what love is anytime we see a visually pleasing moment.
Recently I have been seeing some videos in third person, James Charles recording a video in Mexico, couples seen creating a video posing with a vacation backdrop— This reveals to me (1) the act of posting a moment has become more important to us than being the ones in it and (2) that we are focused on seeing behind the veil of these moments of perfection. We want them to be true but only for us and if not for us, then not at all.
Love must now be authentic and aesthetic. Effortless but deliberate. Private but publicly validated.
(Body paragraph two) Does the film pander or provoke?
Keep in mind while we watch:
How does Materialists play with our expectations? how did it think we would respond —anticipating our needs. Did it disappoint on purpose? what points did the movie bring up? Or did it just miss the mark?
Did it anticipate our social media-trained responses? Did it set up an emotional arc and then flatten it for irony?
“Did it disappoint on purpose?” My answer is YES — Let’s play with that tension with a...
FULL MOVIE ANALYSIS:
Starting strong answering the question “who is Lucy in her world?”. The opening shot revealing where Lucy is in her life and her career as a match maker. I think this properly sets the tone of the movie— as Lucy is the voice in our heads (and the voice of our friends) telling us to desensitize ourselves to rejection as we move “onward and upward” from every sign of disinterest or breakup to the next possibility of happily ever after.
Angry Sophie.
Sophie is just a girl who wants nothing less than the dream that was sold to her as a child and she has also been convinced that she is unworthy if she goes on without it— and she believes that. Lucy is a salesperson, she sells us the fantasy of the loving match made in heaven.
Real quick: imagine you are dating Sophie and you forgot to do the dishes and this is how she looks at you saying, “I am not asking for a miracle. I am asking for the bare minimum. I am trying to settle.” lol pass.
The film sets up conversations:
-materialism and consumerism in dating,
-the love triangle,
-and the focus on our main character study— Lucy.
The main critiques that I have and others have mentioned is the way the first half of the movie is delightful, engaging and almost a living breathing real life romance. And the second half falls flat or fails to meet our expectations.
So Lucy is good at her job. We are invited into her place of work where women meet her in celebration. She is responsible for 9 marriages since she has been hired. Her best advice is whatever kind of man the woman asks for, you deliver. OK. There is some performative smoking and they offer us quotes like:
“GAME CHANGER”,
“6 inches can double a man’s value in the market, if you can afford it, it’s definitely a good investment.”
Other wild things Lucy says: “The happy ending to the first date isn’t the second date, it’s changing each other’s diapers and burying each other. You are looking for a nursing home partner and a grave buddy.”
(side note) This is when I implore you to read/watch the play called Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins…
This movie is playing you, but you bought a ticket and asked to be played.
My favorite scene of the whole film:
The woman brought to tears in a panic the moment before she says “I do”. The conversation that Lucy has with her rips our collective hearts out. Lucy first provides the bride confidentiality and then the bride admits that the reason she is getting married is because she believes that her husband makes her sister jealous and she loves the way that makes her feel.
Lucy responds, “he makes you feel valuable.” This is our matchmaker’s romantic spin on the rather ugly truth of this woman’s intentions for marriage. The film is not offering us the fantasy of romance but truly re-branding our insecurities about why we want to be married in the first place. We are the bride. Lucy is the film asking us, “be honest, why is this so important to you?”
Personal anecdote:
When I watched it, there was a guy sitting next to me in the theater, making audible laughing sounds all throughout this scene. I assumed he was laughing at the audacity of women for wanting to be brides in the first place, their desire to host weddings, and seeing her ugly truth on screen may have been validating for those who see women as villains for wanting to spend money on a fantasy. I had to look at it from a male perspective— never being included in a bathroom gathering or never having to crowd around the girl crying at the party— to see the comedy in the scene. I suppose the group of girls walking pensively to the room and then eagerly waiting to see if the bride will agree to walk down the aisle is funny. Like in an absurd kind of way, like once you zoom out of the situation and feel zero empathy for the fact that in that actual moment there would have been such an intense amount of pressure since the wedding has already started, been paid for, and the guest have already arrived and ultimately what she is about to do will change the course of her life and her husband’s forever. But yeah sure, lol light work.
(before the magical coke and beer delivery)
Back to the movie: Harry, inside the venue, when he meets Lucy, he is admiring her work. He witnessed her speaking with potential clients and Harry later finds her at the table to compliment her sales pitch, “you make them feel like it’s their idea. It’s not like you are telling people they need you, nobody wants to hear that— if they need you then something is wrong with them. Instead you are saying ‘you could do this on your own but if you are lucky enough to be able to afford me then why not?’ You are a luxury good. And they really do feel like they need you, just like they need every other luxury in their lives.”
This is the quote of the movie. This is the movie. Twenty minutes in and the director has given us everything plain and simple. This is the thesis statement: Relationships are a luxury and everyone feels like they need one, just like they need everything else in their lives. This is peak consumerism. I mean we can put the pictures on the wall and connect the dots with yarn, but its all gonna bring us back here to this quote.
Drawing my own conclusions:
This is foreshadowing the relationship with Lucy and Harry— he describes exactly why he wants to and does pursue her. She is a luxury item that he can afford her. She confirms this when she says “you make me feel valuable.” People. Please! You have fallen right into the trap of this artist, Celine Song, has you singing the tune she wanted you to. You wanted a perfect rom-com and you will accept nothing less. And if it is not perfect! You will toss it to the side and say “onward and upward!”
SHE PLAYED YOU. And you paid her to do it. Honestly. How silly is that.
Well done Celine Song. Well done to the cast and crew. And thanks so much A24 for always delivering.
I digress, resume the movie:
“Love is easy. Because we can’t help it. It just walks into our lives sometimes.” Coke and Beer arrival.
*deeply considers this statement* I guess so.
The scene of Lucy and John speaking outside the venue,
(I feel like we smoke because we don’t know what to do with our hands, it’s performative smoking)
Thanks to the smoking, there is so much pause and nuance that it actually allows us as the audience to project our feelings of longing on to the characters. This is a true to life scene, all the words you can’t say mixed with the thoughts of wanting to say them sooooo bad.
With some acting experience myself, I know that it can be difficult to hold these sorts of pauses— I was instructed to think the character’s thoughts so that I can portray their minds racing and let the scene breathe in the pauses, the way we do irl. SO big standing ovation. These scenes are absolutely yum yum yum. So good.
Lol this derpy photo, my bad it was an active screen shot
John’s fixation on making sense of how he feels for Lucy, mirrors his longing for a big break in acting, thinking if he wants it bad enough— understands why he wants it so bad— then why hasn’t it happened for him yet? John and all of as are asking: what is it suppose to feel like when I find the love of my life? And how can I be certain this is for me?
We are waiting for that feeling of being ready or the moment we reach our destination.
The perpetual longing— this is our humanity. And because we are told what love is and is not, we are carefully analyzing everything about our partners/desires and comparing it to the feeling we thought we should have. *now playing: How I think it should feel- Ruby Red*
There is nothing like familiarity to make you feel seen. It’s like “someone please witness me but no commentary from the peanut gallery!”
Recap, who do we know so far:
Lucy— the voice in our head that says we deserve more
John— our unvalidated selves
Harry— pure indulgence. Harry. This is not a person— IDK if that was on purpose but he has no substance. He is ideals. Money. Real estate. Home decor. Willingness to provide.
Sophie— the princess waiting in the tower
OKAY. Proceed.
The couple yelling in the car & in the street
“It’s not because we are not in love. It is because we are broke.”
This level of brutal honesty. I am shook. But I was shook when my ex was asking to have sex with other people and said, “I don’t want to bring them here to meet my family like I did with you, I just want to…you know.”
So I guess people do talk like that. In this case, Lucy is very aware of our society’s class system and its impact on individuals. Poverty was a destructive element to her parent’s relationship so she has a strong fear of repeating the cycle and the inevitable end of her own relationship with John.
and then the matchmaker meetings with three men: “BMI, fit, and young but relatable women”
We love the admission from men that their standards? (if you want to call them that) Desires? Fetishes? Don’t make any sense. Like makes no cents, no dollars, no value! They are not self aware in the scenes and it is part of Lucy’s issue with the job. People are brutally honest to her in ways they otherwise wouldn’t be.
Men are lame. OK. I am more interested in this nod to conflict styles! We scratch an itch, take curiosity in the how our parents carve us to be like them. During this expensive dinner, once Lucy’s dream anniversary date with John that was contrasted to eating out of a street cart, she asks Harry, “How expensive the meal is makes the date romantic?”
Girl. YOU LITERALLY SAID… lol but here’s that—
2000s–Now – Postmodern Romance, Performative Intimacy & Digital Desire:
Love is now shaped by dating apps, image curation, trauma discourse, and niche identity politics. We don’t just want partners—we want mirror reflections, emotional safety, ethical consistency, and financial compatibility. The stakes are higher, the choices infinite, and our expectations increasingly contradictory.
—nature of modern day romance. Realizing that it is not just the things you receive and experiences you have but a perfect storm of that and how much you are genuinely interested in someone.
See, you think you are watching a movie. People always think movies have nothing to say about us.
They are somehow removed from reality and thus not connected to our thoughts or behaviors at all.
*rolls eyes
(Dinner SCENE)
(Harry) How am I as a corpse?
(Lucy) A good corpse
(Harry) How about as a payout?
(Lucy) *giggles* couldn’t ask for better
(Harry) A nursing home partner?
(Lucy) (The silence is loud, I know you hear it.)
(Harry) A grave buddy?
(Lucy) (first, MORE SILENCE) you can do better than me.
AHA! We caught her. What happens when you find the person that finally sees you?
Ya get seen! The competition that Lucy won against John and everyone agreeing “you are so much better than him, he doesn’t deserve you.” This validates her as the good person, the prize, the one that got away due to someone else’s inadequacies.
It’s not your fault.
My suggestion here is, Lucy never felt comfortable being the “toxic” one that was willing to fight in the street. She has been doing her “its just math” in her head about her & Harry and in her eyes she will always fall short here. She likes being the good partner— it gives her some sense of control. This dinner scene is a power struggle.
Which is normal. These kinds of mental gymnastics teach us about ourselves and each other, the strengths and weakness of the relationship, and then we get to decide how to respond to those.
This. This is the moment Pedro got me. I am not a Stan. But this? Okay! I will swoon. My goodness.
I mean ultimately submitting to Harry and his lifestyle changes everything about her and hyper-independence. She would essentially lose herself and have to comply to a new version of self. *Ex. It is kinda like if someone,28 years old, has been dancing since they were 7. Then giving up dancing would require a severance from their past selves. Like “I don’t work there no more so my innie is stuck and I can longer otherwise access them.”
Lucy is talking about herself in the light of her own insecurities and the knowledge of other people’s judgements. We are taught to compete and she is voicing that here.
Say it with me, “we don’t hate the movie, we hate what it says about us.” Facts. B. Deadass. Lol
Also, note: no sex scenes? *applause* We don’t need it.
It has only caused more shame as we sit down with our friends and family to watch a film that unknowingly has some long upsetting sex scene in it. Like Bridesmaids is my mom’s favorite movie but in order to watch it, I guess we gotta laugh about bad sex together. Hahaha mommy— no. Stop.
THE SCENE IN THE OFFICE- SOPHIE L & MARK P
Trigger warning: let’s be gentle with this subject, yeah?
Okay. So Lucy’s innocence is showing. Naïveté? I dunno. She has obviously never been victimized or known anyone who has been assaulted. And so in this scene, our CEO looks cold and removed as she does her job— handling the situation and managing the emotions of the people who work for her. Lucy questioned her as if she has never heard of men harming women and she would have never taken the job if she knew that were a possibility. Grace! We need to give everyone and ourselves grace. I am not arguing for the subject matter to be commonplace or for smaller reactions from the characters. I am also not villianizing the company and those who work there for doing only what they are capable of— matching people with potential partners. I am sure Lucy just didn’t know how to react and any reaction is OK.
Zooming out: What does this do for the film?
Well I think saying it makes it an A24 film, as they are not here to comfort us but to give us riveting art. Does this make it more art? Kind of. It has a message, it highlights a shared experience, it disturbs the comfortable.
*I also think it removes any ability for this film to be timeless. Thanks to the statement, it dissolves all chances of being something people rewatch for comfort— this is not an early 2000s rom-com. So we lost that audience right here. (But! Nod to Showgirls, 1995 film and cult classic that does include a vicious SA scene but remains on the rewatch list)
Everyone looking for fantasy just got hit by triggering reality.
The truth is in the room with us and how will we cope? There’s still an hour left of the movie.
The moment she is referring to her notes in the bathroom
as if she would write, “seems like a danger to women” and just moved passed it— this is the war of the victim. “What did I do to make this happen?” A sign of a good person— reflection and introspection.
She brings Harry to John’s play. OK. Weird. If you wanna have a relationship with your ex?!?!
Okay and then they go to the bar together. Harry leaving her to talk to her ex at the bar, I mean we love a secure man but what is this. Lucy is really spiraling about what happened to Sophie. John sees it— emotionally attuned to her. I admire his willingness to say, “hey I see something here, what is the matter?” BUT John says just the thing to put Lucy on her high horse. She likes it that way— He’s dumb and poor. So I am better than him. Grade A classism making us fight each other.
So we don’t talk to Harry, we just appear next to him and sleep at his house.
OH OKAY.
Then we meet women: (1) with deeply rooted political views (as a closeted lesbian woman), (2) racial preferences and (3) a dissertation on what kind of partner they want.
(YouTube short of Lucy’s response)
Lucy is feeling disheartened. “Burnt out”
Our boss is a fan of classism as she says its OK if customers disturb Lucy with their demands and ungodly expectations,“They give us thousands of dollars they are entitled to some regression.” she says.
Okay.
Lucy briefly internet stalks her client...
(side note) My friend was like “you gotta post about it when you get home so people don’t know where you are.” Very astute.
Then we see Lucy outside Sophie’s apartment Joe Goldberg style, performative smoking!
Sophie lets Lucy chase her across NY.
Lucy and Sophie are in a classic “the only people listening” fight.
This is the kind of fight that doesn’t include the people who are responsible for the transgression(s), they are not present, so there is no one there to take accountability for the actions and it is just the helpless victim screaming at the helpless listener.
This happens a lot in relationships, thanks to previous partners and even family dynamics, friend breakups, can leave people holding on to traumas until it feels safe to let them go. And often times they don’t feel safe doing this alone and it is not until someone else makes them feel safe that they do let those emotions speak. So it has this sort of backwards logic, The person creating the safety gets all the noise of past chaos and they may internalize this as issues within the relationship but often times it is a reaction to what is no longer happening. A release of the stress from previous interactions. I guess the only way to combat this is to practice sitting with these harder truths and not internalizing them. It is not Lucy’s fault AND it is not Sophie to blame BUT it still sucks. The energy has to go somewhere, so you can spiral about it. Or you can use that to enact change. But often times, people are reactionary or even trying to confirm their negative thoughts about themselves as Sophie does here, claiming that Lucy thinks she is worthless.
This kind of dynamic reminds me of this quote:
Who do we really love? The people we lie to or the people who know our truth.
Cause apparently, we are not telling Harry about what we do at work or how it makes us feel. Harry is a prop!
Okay, so before this next scene plays out, lemme just share what I thought was happening: Conflict styles, he said he would not be the couple fighting in the street. OK. Then who will you be? The type to slink out of bed and pour yourself a drink? The avoidant, lacking in intimacy or emotional warmth, Perception is reality kind of perfect family?
BUT THEN...this.
The leg surgery, “GAME CHANGER”, “6 inches can double a man’s value in the market, if you can afford it, it’s definitely a good investment.”
Lord. Imagine God’s reaction to this— “they doing what to each other?!”
Where does it end.
This played as comedy to me which is OK but seems misplaced.
And then we dump him cause he’s a short king or because they simply don’t talk about anything? Who could say, we haven’t really seen Harry and Lucy interact beyond her staying at his place. Maybe this is the sign of her erasure as she becomes one of his possessions. Idk they didn’t invite me into the writer’s room. Clearly. Next time, just call me before something like this happens again.
The horrific idea of body modifications in order to find love— it just reveals the strong collective mindset of who is seen as a worthy partner. Also the avoidance of ourselves creating this inability to be vulnerable with someone, Harry didn’t even consider loving her. He was just financially capable of checking off the boxes of our collective ideals.
Lucy going to her ex’s house when she has no where to stay is so toxic.
Where are her friends? Somewhere tired of hearing her talk about John and so they abandoned her?
The drive with him is familiar, like a reminder of what it was like to believe in the illusion. Before reality killed her dream self and her dream John. She can’t seem to let grief and gratitude sit in the same place.
Or maybe they are just incompatible, idk there’s not enough to go off here.
After they kiss on the dance floor he leaves in a huff. She follows. He is asking great questions: boundaries!
No you cannot impose on me, kiss me and fuck me to get over your short king.
Again, where are her friends? She really shouldn’t play him like this but I mean the past will always call you and then laugh at for answering.
Then there is weird writing, Skip to (15:26)
“When I see your face, I see wrinkles…”
“Just because you can’t afford it, doesn’t mean it’s worth having.”
So I watched this scene as an audience member that loves Dakota Johnson on screen and I enjoy Chris Evans— I also love romantic movies. So as this scene plays, I am all sucked up in it. The idea that we could break up and get back together as more well rounded people and be grateful to have each other is so juicy nostalgia. However, you cannot communicate through incompatibility.
There is a lack of shared values here: (cutback to bar scene)
John asks her if she misses acting. Something they used to enjoy together. Lucy responds with “I wouldn’t know how to stand, how to speak, but you. You’ve always been good.” She’s like intimidated by John’s passion— his willingness to endure anything for a shot at doing what he loves. That’s his winning quality. And ah! He is performing/acting as her boyfriend and failing and taking notes from Lucy before he tries again.
I am not sure I am even making sense anymore but I am trying so hard to find the reality in the writing that seemed to take a nose dive after the SA reveal.
Yeah, maybe Lucy and John end up together because she is obsessed with the chase and he is too. Chasing everything in his life. Lucy, his job, a better life, a parking spot. Idk, he likes feeling unworthy and Lucy enjoys his performance of groveling and longing. It is truly the only time she looks at him with love in her eyes.
“We haven’t been together properly in so long that you’ve forgotten that you don’t want to be with me…” says Lucy
That one.
And her weighing the trade offs of living in his crappy apartment, sitting in his crappy car, idk it gives this sense of nihilism— she feels doomed to his circumstances, that she genuinely doesn’t believe in him. I want to avoid making blanket statements about this kind of experience— I think watching a plot this nuanced is why we are all drowning. We want answers and clarity, but most of all I think we watch romance movies for hope annnnd I am not sure Materialists delivered anything but thoughts of texting an ex.
Sophie calling her previous match maker to come sit with her cause the guy is outside harassing her is not the plot we want. Sophie is a disaster. She has no friends in the city? OK. Family? No mention. “I really need to get a boyfriend so that I have someone to call that’s not my fucking matchmaker.” says Sophie to Lucy.
Honestly. No. You need a community. In what ways is our society responsible for Sophie’s condition? Commentary on the loneliness epidemic? Consumerism? Individualism? Like no you can’t just get a boyfriend to earn safety.
“People are people are people are people.”
At this point I am sad I started this project ahahaha! I am done watching this and the sad thing is, there is only 10 minutes left and no time to truly resolve Sophie with any real growth so let’s use her as a plot device. Our main characters are so in love that they have gone completely tone deaf. “Someone who can’t help but love me back.” Sophie says to Lucy setting up our end of movie kiss.
They still felt romantic after a night of fighting, no sleep, no food, and the threat of assault on a woman? Yeah, let’s kiss and make up right here on Sophie’s door step.
This is getting back with your ex propaganda!
“I’ll be your certainty.”
I am certain the end of this movie STINKS!
Just put cinematic music to a real dumbass idea and call it a happy ending. (maybe a nod to the absurdity of marriage being the end all of women’s life story and accomplishments?)
At this point, I am done working so hard on this essay, no more pictures.
And the cut back to the cave people— is she laughing at me? For getting all wrapped up in the 17th century French ideas of romance and the data sets, and the psychology information?
THEY CUT BACK TO THE FOOD CART THAT SHE SAID SHE DIDN’T WANT TO EAT FROM?! Like what are you saying? She ate at the fancy dinner with Harry and discovered she doesn’t like it as much as she thought she would?
When her boss calls to offer her a promotion and Lucy declines, her boss then asks “what will you do?” (Referring to Lucy saying she will quit her job) and Lucy says, “IDK maybe marry someone poor.”
SHUT UP! *Quote Mike’s Mic* Don’t piss me off!
WHAT! We are gonna sit on the bench and eat cart food with this man? For a living? Ahahaha what. These women need friends. That’s problem number one. No friends, no mirror of self reflection.
I cannot say what happened here. Too ambitious with the plot lines? Like I get it, you want to speak on women’s rights and men’s disgusting behavior— but maybe not here? Like right time right place? This is no longer, When Harry met Sally, I cannot rewatch this for simple comfort or nostalgia. Great! Another Dakota Johnson movie deemed unwatchable. I LOVE HER! You people keep fumbling this woman. It’s sick! It is sick!
Sigh. Yeah, you guys are right to be mad. I wanted it to be more than the sum of its parts but it just crashes into the credits and blows up into a small dumpster fire.
(Body paragraph three) Highlights, pitfalls, ultimate consensus.
Visuals: were wonderful. Dakota Johnson, yes. The shots are rich in contrast and I love the long pauses for quiet nuanced acting. I think everyone looked very responsive to the other characters in the scene, this part felt real. Pedro fans, he got me when he curled up in the chair to speak with her at the wedding, very cute. Annnnd again with the kiss on the hand. I also enjoyed his apartment, John’s apartment was pretty believable too. I like the tiny hall sized bathroom with pedestal sink that our characters can have a proper & authentic existential crisis in front of.
Tone: I can see that Chris Evans has a significant other, his performance reads “I have had a girlfriend before.”
(side note) Dakota J. is still the best Anastasia Steele I could have asked for, as someone who read the fifty shades books and liked them, I am sad the movies didn’t translate. I think I could have used a Anastasia Steele voice over to reveal her hunger for Christian as she was always thinking about him as he stalked her to her liking. But the movie does just read “Christian, why are you here? Stop sending me flowers.”
Pedro is a cute prop. His character was just charm which felt flat to me, but I don’t think that was his fault. Maybe it is a reflection of how Lucy saw him, for his credentials and not his real self. He also mentioned not wanting to be vulnerable enough to feel silly in love so I think it was a choice.
However, the mention SA is a huge pitfall and this is mostly because there is no justice here. I think that a movie like this requires some hope and that was not provided. (Unlike in Showgirls, 1995 when Nomi goes to kick the sh*t out the dude that hurt her friend.) The kissing outside her doorstep after a terrifying night of Sophie’s loneliness making her so vulnerable to danger was upsetting. I didn’t feel like kissing at that moment or promising someone my love after that. I felt icky.
Well, I did my due diligence here: watch the film a few times, separated the scenes from each other to admire them as if I was in theater and may try to perform them myself. And the movie still buffs out to be what critics say. I think this still fits within my idea that the film wanted to disappoint, like it wanted to bring reality into our romance fantasy just to see how we would react but, then again the movie barely reacted to Sophie’s experience. How could it? Sophie is a side character, not our main focus, so she doesn’t have screen time to exist in a way that feels grounded or real and wouldn’t completely derail the whole story. This is something I may have said in the writers room, especially in 2025, I am not sure there is a whole lot of room for error. Hence why we keep getting reimagined stories and sequels of old ones we barely like in the first place. I want to commend the movie for it’s attempt at examining modern dating, confronting us with some hard truths about our fantasies— and most importantly for casting Dakota Johnson. She is a dream on screen and I hope more people can see that AND not ruin her performance with a bad script or rushed post production of great scenes. Yes, it was a team effort to crash this one into the ground.
(conclusion) Dating is a risk and a luxury.
Perfectionism has destroyed our chances of feeling true desire— not because we are impossible to please but because we have commodified our entire existence. Thus our love has to be profitable too and this is rarely the case. And that is scary for those of us who are relying on our romantic relationships to be what sustains us or makes a great life worth living. As well as for those who want to enjoy what is possible in relationships but simply cannot afford to. Basically relationships are a luxury that some us won’t be able to afford in some way— financially, emotionally availability or otherwise. The biggest take away is that dating is a risk with a high chance of violence against women AND do not romanticize your ex just because the dating pool looks bleak. Also, spend time with your friends.
