Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal make for a starry love triangle in this exquisite new film from director Celine Song, who previously made the Oscar-nominated Past Lives.

If you've seen any of the trailers for Celine Song's Materialists, ignore them. In those previews and on paper, the film seems like a well-cast but stock romantic comedy, with Dakota Johnson as a professional matchmaker torn between a former love (Chris Evans) and a dazzling new possibility (Pedro Pascal). In fact, the film is hardly a romcom at all, but something far more original and captivating: a piercingly honest exploration of love and money and the inevitable connection between the two. (Just ask Jane Austen about the connection between a man with a fortune and the want of a wife.) Song doesn't reinvent the romcom here. She cleverly sidesteps it.

Materialists is more akin to her first film, the nuanced Past Lives, than it might seem. As in Past Lives, with its delicate story of a woman whose childhood love from Korea re-enters her happily married New York life, Materialists is exquisitely made, character-driven and talky, with some glittering dialogue. It's the kind of idiosyncratic film a director sometimes gets to do after a great success – Past Lives earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Original Screenplay – and Song makes the most of it.

Lucy's job as a matchmaker for high-end clients might seem like a strained device, but Song herself briefly had that job before she broke through as a playwright and film-maker. And Lucy is very good at her job, as we see when she cajoles a reluctant bride (Louisa Jacobson) on her wedding day to go through with the marriage. From there the plot follows a romcom trajectory, setting up a choice. At that wedding Lucy meets the groom's rich, handsome brother, Henry (Pascal), and is served a drink by John (Evans), the ex she broke up with after five years, who is still a struggling actor working the wedding as a waiter. A quick flashback shows that they broke up over money. Eating dinner from a........

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