The brutal reality is that if you don’t come from money, the best way to boost your finances is through a relationship
O
n Sunday I took myself, with a slight hangover, to see a preview screening of Materialists, the long-awaited new film by Celine Song. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy, a matchmaker with a talent for pairing her exacting clients with someone who ticks most of their boxes and is also likely to accept them. She is less cupid, more market analyst – capable of seeing through her singletons’ self-serving bluster and spin to appraise their actual worth – then matching it with someone of equivalent value.
A thirtysomething woman of only average good looks, for instance, can’t hope to land a “unicorn” – a 6ft-tall high earner with his original hairline. Unicorns want to date twentysomethings – and they can get them, too.
Lucy herself is jaded as a result of her job, and pragmatic, having grown up poor. Her last serious relationship – with John (Chris Evans), an aspiring theatre actor/cater waiter – ended after he admitted, just before their anniversary dinner, that he didn’t have $25 to pay for parking.
