Dreams

Mexican director Michel Franco has been making feature-length films for over fifteen years. For the most part, his work has been little-seen outside of his native country, where he has been nominated for numerous awards.

That changed some in 2023 when Franco teamed with Jessica Chastain (just one year removed from winning an Oscar for best actress) and Peter Sarsgaard to make Memory, a film about a recovering addict (Chastain) paid to look after a man (Sarsgaard) suffering from early-onset dementia. What might sound like an old-school TV movie of the week was, in fact, a complex moral and ethical study of how much agency the mentally ailing should be allowed, especially after he and his caretaker fall in love. 

Memory is a rare film that is disturbing and moving in equal measure, often within the same scene. While the film wasn’t widely seen in the States, it received strong reviews and healthy streaming access. I thought it was one of the best films of the year. 

Michel Franco’s new film, Dreams, finds him and Chastain working together once again, in a very different story, but one deeply rooted in the moral and ethical conflicts that all of the director’s films contain. Franco is a fascinating filmmaker who appears to live by a working code that has no room for flash, fatuousness, or bloat. His films rarely crest the 100-minute mark; they are starkly written and shot, typically without a conventional score. Grand speeches are nowhere to be found. It’s as if Franco wants you to forget you are watching a film, and instead are silent observers to the failings of humanity as evinced in his characters. 

Where Memory was ever so slightly more hopeful than Franco’s other movies, Dreams finds the director in far harsher form. Chastain plays a wealthy socialite named Jennifer whose philanthropic whims have ensconced her in the world of dance, moving her between San Francisco and Mexico. In Mexico, she meets Fernando (Isaac Hernandez), a talented, much younger ballet dancer with whom she strikes up a torrid affair. 

Both Jennifer and Isaac want to be together, but Jennifer has terms and conditions. As much as she admires Isaac’s body and his talents, she is heavily invested in keeping her status free of any public knowledge of their relationship. Despite the signs that Jennifer is not the person he wishes her to be, the naive Isaac goes through great and dangerous lengths to be a part of her larger world. 

Of course, the power dynamic in the relationship greatly favors Jennifer as Isaac’s every step on American soil is fraught with peril. A peril that Jennifer takes advantage of through a jaw-dropping betrayal that allows her to (she thinks) have her cake and eat it too. Not seeing Isaac as a whole person, Jennifer does not account for Isaac’s response to her actions, which adds further risk to his already tenuous position. 

Franco shoots Dreams in an almost antiseptic fashion. Bland white paint colors most of the walls, and much of Chastain’s wardrobe is as alabaster as her skin tone. In choosing this pale color scheme, Franco makes the character of Fernando seem even more exposed than he already is. As we listen to Jennifer and her “philanthropist” friends discuss Mexicans, they do so in careless and even cruel ways. They think so highly of themselves for aiding those in need that they barely consider the individuals they are assisting in any real manner. 

Chastain, an actor who exudes enormous natural warmth, gives the iciest and cruelest performance of her estimable career in Dreams. Her Jennifer may be taking a risk by carrying on with a young Mexican dancer, but she does so with the full knowledge that no matter what happens with their relationship, she will come out the other end just fine. That’s what enormous wealth allows for. The worst thing that can happen to Jennifer is a bit of infamy, which, in the times we live in, is its own form of currency. Jennifer can be as straightforward, lascivious, and cruel as she wants to be—her risk is only to her reputation. The pitfalls for Fernando, as an undocumented person in the United States, are far deeper. Fernando’s risk is life. 

The economy with which this morality tale plays out is quite remarkable. The dialogue in the film is minimal. The camera moves only when it must. Characters are most frequently shot from either distance or in close-up. The impact of the former creates a feeling of eavesdropping, the latter pulls you in so close as to make you long for escape from the overt and discomfiting intimacy between Jennifer and Fernando. 

It’s easy to see how a different filmmaker might take this material and turn it into a hot-blooded erotic thriller, but Franco has no interest in such excesses. Dreams is the opposite of melodrama. It’s almost as if Franco is more of a presenter than a director. Considering the racially charged and fraught relationship the United States currently has with its neighbors south of the border, Dreams could have been a grand statement movie. 

Dreams does not make a grand statement in a “movie way,” it trusts that the presentation allows the statement to speak for itself. Make no mistake, the film is of the moment, but it illuminates the moment without pounding the nail. 

As the film reaches its icy and inevitably tragic conclusion, the matter-of-factness of the final sequence is all the more chilling due to its restraint. As the house lights came up, I discovered that Dreams isn’t a movie you simply walk away from. It’s one that you have to shake off. Be forewarned, it may take days to do just that.

Greenwich Entertainment has acquired Dreams for U.S. distribution. A domestic release date for the film has not been announced at the time of this review’s publication.