I recently watched the movie The Materialists (2025) and read the book Writers and Lovers (2020). Both pieces have very similar, and very of-the-moment, takes on money, men, and exhaustion.

The setups

In Writers and Lovers, protagonist Casey has been working on a novel for years. She lives in a garden shed on the property of her brother’s friend and works as a server at a high-end restaurant in Boston. She’s in debt and recovering from her mom’s sudden death.

She meets fellow writer Silas through a mutual friend, and there’s an immediate spark. He’s grieving the death of his sister. They understand each other. He asks her out and they set a date, but he spontaneously leaves on a monthslong roadtrip right before the date. Casey is rather put out, but soon after meets Oscar, an older widower with two young sons. She dates him for a while, wondering what it would be like to live with wealth and ease, but ultimately leaves him to pursue a relationship with Silas.

In The Materialists, Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a successful matchmaker for rich clients in New York City. She meets Harry (Pablo Pascal), an older, wealthy finance guy, at the wedding of her client. Harry is the ideal man in many ways, and like Casey, Lucy finds her new life of wealth and ease alluring. But in the end, it’s not enough. She returns to John (Chris Evans), her struggling-actor ex-boyfriend who is decidedly not wealthy.

Someone else’s money

Both Lucy and Casey are defined in the initial stages of the book/movie by their exhaustion. They are not financially secure, despite working incredibly hard, and don’t really see a path forward to the kind of lives they want. The ideal older man, for both protagonists, represents a new kind of relationship, an aspirational one in which they can relax and enjoy the fruits of someone else’s money. They go on dates in nice restaurants and someone else pays the bill. Lucy goes on expensive vacations and wakes up in an over-the-top Manhattan apartment. Casey dates a man who owns a house, is an established author, and has two sweet children. She’s able to exhale from her frenetic existence as server and aspiring author and relax in an environment of stability.

For both women, this padded stability has its costs. The relationships take the edge off of their relentless striving. For a while, this is welcome relief. Soon, though, Lucy and Casey both realize that something is missing, that the striving is perhaps part of them. It seems like both of them decide that actually, they want to achieve happiness/financial independence on their own, that they don’t want to skip steps. They go back to the men they initially rejected, the men who are striving just like them. Lucy goes back to her ex of five years, a struggling theater actor who is still broke. Casey goes back to Silas, still an aspiring writer.

A fantasy for the exhausted

The Materialists and Writers and Lovers draw the same two conclusions. First, both pieces posit that ending up with a man you initially rejected is romantic. Lucy originally leaves John because he wasn’t going to give her the lifestyle she wanted. John’s lack of money is not resolved at all, and Lucy’s mindset hasn’t changed very much either so them ending up together is pretty baffling.

Casey originally leaves Silas (left is sort of strong, though––decided not to proceed with?) because she thought he was flaky. Silas’s flakiness is justified in the end. (“I couldn’t go out with you until I felt more normal,” he says, more normal being something he would achieve on a roadtrip. Casey is satisfied with this explanation, though I can’t say I am.)

Either way, the premise holds: both women end up with someone they already know, exchanging an ideal older man for an age-appropriate man whose flaws are known and whose financial circumstances roughly match their own.

The second conclusion is financial––both pieces say that financial independence you didn’t earn yourself is hollow; but also that if you work hard enough, you can be self-sufficient. Lucy gets a promotion at the end of the movie. By her own work, she surmounts her precarity. Same with Casey––she sells the book she’s been writing and gets a job as a teacher. They both do it themselves, without the rich men, and are therefore happier.

Both of these conclusions seem very modern to me. At a time where dating apps (endless choice! Endless exhaustion!) are basically requisite for finding a partner, a known, non-new man feels uniquely fulfilling. At a time where financial precarity and debt is basically a given for many people, the allure of “making it yourself” is a strong pull. Taken together

Taken together, these conclusions seem like a very specific take on the current state of the world. When financial stability feels perpetually out of reach and dating apps have turned partnership into a cold optimization problem, there’s something appealing about stories that tell you that the answer is not the rich guy or the endless possibility of dating apps. You have already have the right guy, and you already have what it takes to make money. You just need a new perspective.

This is, of course, very comforting. I liked the movie and I loved the book. I’d recommend both. These conclusions are very comforting. The more I think about it, though, the more it seems like these conclusions are just a convenient fantasy for exhausted women.