PUBLISHED
September 21, 2025
We were raised on the story that love is pure, and that the noblest marriages are those untouched by calculation. Films, songs and books tell us to seek companionship for the heart, not for the wallet. Most Pakistani elders tell us to be more practical — meaning marry for social and financial stability. Fairy tales assure us that love alone can weather every storm. Yet reality has shown again and again that old blasé saying is true: when poverty knocks on the door, love flies out the window. This proverb has origins not in one corner of the world; it is traced back to African, Serbian and German cultures. It goes to show that money is not an afterthought; it shapes whether a marriage becomes liberation or confinement be it in any part of the world. A sense of security in a marriage is dependent on the coexistence of love and physical comfort.
Celine Song’s latest film Materialists pushes us into that uncomfortable recognition. At first glance, it is an easy romantic trope: a love triangle. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is torn between two men: one wealthy and secure, the other broke but emotionally present. She herself is a professional matchmaker working for a proper firm with HR and legal departments. Everyday she tries to manage the expectations of men and women in order to find them compatible partners. Now she can’t help but apply the same calculations of compatibility to her own decision of settling with a man.
Most women who watch the film will see it isn’t simply about romance. It is about the terms under which women are allowed to desire, and what they are forced to sacrifice in order to be respectable, safe, or even simply survive. Watching it, I couldn’t help but think of countless women I know in Pakistan, weighing their own futures under the glare of family expectations and the fear of financial dependence.
Lucy’s dilemma feels almost universal in its simplicity: Harry (Pedro Pascal) is filthy rich and offers comfort and ease; John (Chris Evans), her ex, has zilch to his name and offers love and intensity. At first glance, her choice is framed as an individual question of the heart. But for women in our part of the world, the decision is never just individual. A rishta is rarely about two people — it is about families aligning, reputations safeguarded, and practicalities negotiated. When parents describe a “good proposal,” they often list job titles, degrees, and passports before mentioning compatibility. Lucy’s suitors could easily be transposed into a drawing room in Lahore or Karachi, where relatives debate which match will bring the safest life. The answer will always be the rich guy.
What gives Materialists its unexpected gravitas are the plot turns that complicate what might otherwise feel like a simple triangle. Rich-and-handsome Harry is not written as flawless—his privilege carries its own blind spots, and the comfort he offers is never free of compromises. The cracks in his perfection remind us that money may ease life, but it does not insulate against emptiness or distance.
Then there is Lucy’s professional life, where she is confronted with the assault of a client. That subplot feels almost like an intrusion from another register of reality, but it lands with weight: a reminder that women’s bodies and choices are constantly under siege, regardless of class or romance. The incident shadows Lucy’s own deliberations, underscoring that the stakes of “choice” are not just personal, but also shaped by a world where safety itself is precarious.
In Pakistan, marriage is often less a private romance than a collective project. Women grow up knowing their choices will be scrutinised not just by their parents but also by the extended network of relatives who measure worth by stability and affluence. Without robust safety nets — financial or social — marrying “well” is often seen as the only insurance policy. To be single for too long is to court whispers; to marry a man without means is to risk dependency that can spiral into vulnerability or even abuse.
This is not only a South Asian burden. Around the world, women navigate the same push and pull, against varying contexts. A woman in New York may delay marriage to focus on her career, exercising a kind of agency less available in Karachi. A woman in London may choose passion over stability, buffered by the possibility of a welfare state or easier access to work. A single mother in Turkey may find herself carving a life outside marriage altogether, judged for her independence but surviving nonetheless. In each case, class, family, and the unspoken rules of society shape the spectrum of choice. What looks like freedom in one context can feel like constraint in another, but the undercurrent is the same — no choice is ever completely free of calculation.
One of the strengths of Materialists is that it resists painting Lucy as shallow or mercenary. Too often, women in such stories are judged harshly — gold diggers if they choose wealth, foolish romantics if they choose love. Song treats Lucy’s dilemma with dignity, letting the audience sit with the weight of her choice rather than sneer at it. That, in itself, feels radical. Because in our own society, women rarely get the benefit of such nuance. A woman who asks for stability is branded “demanding,” yet the same demand from a man is called ambition. A woman who marries for love and ends up struggling is pitied for being naïve, while a man in the same situation is simply unlucky.
This double standard is why Lucy’s story resonates beyond the screen. Her choice dramatises a truth most women already know: there is no “right” answer. Whether she marries Harry or John or some Dick, her life will be interpreted, judged, and possibly diminished in the eyes of others. What matters is not whether she chose love or money, but whether she claimed the right to decide at all. That is the frontier still contested in many cultures: the belief that a woman’s autonomy in love and life is legitimate, even when her choices make others uncomfortable.
Materialists lingers on this question of math, how good is a package deal after subtracting the compromises?
***SPOILER ALERT***
Song frames Lucy’s decision as an act of rebellion against the coldness of money. She chooses John, affirming love as the higher calling. It is a neat ending, the kind cinema often craves. But off-screen, the stakes are messier. For many women, particularly in countries like ours, to ignore financial stability is not rebellion, it is risk. Dependency is not just an inconvenience, it can determine whether a woman has the ability to leave an unhappy marriage, to support children, to live with dignity.
This does not mean that caring about money cheapens love. It means that love without security can become brittle, collapsing under the weight of unmet needs. The myth that women should choose only for love is, in itself, a way of disciplining them — branding any acknowledgment of money as “materialistic,” even when survival depends on it. What if, instead, we recognised that wanting both affection and stability is not greed but a deeply human wish? What if we stopped framing women’s choices as either calculating or naïve, and saw them as attempts to carve a life within constraints they did not design?
Perhaps that is the real story — demanding a world where women’s choices are not narrowed into impossible binaries. Where the courage lies not in renouncing money for love, nor in renouncing love for money, but in asserting that both are worthy, both are needed, both are possible.
