Material Love, the review of Celine Song’s film with Pedro Pascal

If someone is disappointed by Material lovewill certainly not be because of his director and screenwriter Celine Song, who in 2023 had enchanted with the debut Past Lives. If anything, the risk arises from a marketing that, understandably, has chosen to sell its second film as a light and sparkling rom-com. In short, advertising. And it worked: it was enough to look at the cast – Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal And Chris Evans – and the trailer that let it glimpse the return of the romantic comedy to the big screen, a genre that had already found new life for some time on the platforms.

The reality, however, is that Material love It can only be read as a Roma-com if you accept an autop they can, much more reflective and far from compromising. The commercial side, which generally brings the public closer to certain titles, this time risks deceiving it.

Material lovelove in the time of capitalism

The film represents a coherent, although different stage in the Celine Song path. We find the poetic vein that had made it Past Lives A small cult, but declined this time in a raw, analytical present, which dismantles the romantic conventions to tell love in a society where everything has a price. In 2025 imagined by the director – made of murdered millionaires and of prohibitive rentals – feelings cannot be separated from the economic aspect. Love is capitalist, as it was in the plots of Jane Austen, And financial well -being continues to influence, more or less consciously, relationships.

Song does not deny the primordial strength of feeling, but does not pretend that around there is no world that forces to deal with contracts, bills, precariousness. As Material love becomes an essay on the emotional survival in everyday life: how much do you have the money in a relationship? What does it mean to live a “dignified” love? And how does the feeling change if the bank account is in red?

A triangle inside the rules of the market

The director Orchestra a bright and vibrant love triangle, but inevitably regulated by salaries, personal ambitions and economic fragility. The questions that cross history are never trivial: can love resist without financial stability? Is a richer balance really really to learn to love and let yourself be loved?

Those who accuse Celine song of cynicism perhaps have the privilege of not worrying about the daily issues that the film stages, or still lives in the illusion that “true love wins over everything”. But Material love Remember that, once the credits are off, the couples almost never end with “and they lived happy and happy”: they often face the first tax return.

Source: Vanity Fair

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