Disclaimer: I’m a blind film critic. I’m unaware of this film having an audio description track.
There’s something about timing in terms of films, for better or worse. It’s why One Battle After Another feels so incendiary, or why the financial struggles of Roofman ring true, and even why perhaps so much attention is given to films and television shows still trying to stand from that diversity, equity, and inclusivity are good things, not bad. Politically, a lot of attention has been drawn to illegal immigration, which makes director Michael Franco’s latest work get the sense that it should be doing something, perhaps more than what it does.
Vaguely, the film is about a multi-millionaire (Chastain), who is part of an even wealthier family, and while void of a real job, she basically just makes appearances at things to prove her family cares. While supporting a dance program in Mexico City, she falls for a male ballet dancer (Issac Hernandez), who then gets stuck in a perpetual loop of illegally crossing the border, believing that his true love awaits. She tells him that she’s working on making it so he can stay of course, it’s all bullshit, and she’s just as selfish as the rest of her family, even though she wears her attempted altruism on her sleeve. believing she supports the right causes, but also taking a lover she doesn’t want to be seen with. She is like a modern day plantation owner who sees something she wants to possess, so she takes it. The only guise here, is that instead of the likely persistent rape that occurred during the other era, our trust fund baby actually gets the ballet dancer to fall for her. There’s some sex, some verbally explicit material, and it features your crazy Uncle’s worst nightmare. They’re sending us the worst of the worst. Mexican ballet dancers are crossing the border illegally. My god.
Joking aside, aside from performances from Chastain and Hernandez that at least try to balance out the rampant misguided choices their characters make, this film is, in my opinion, a waste of time. Who is this movie for? I would say sighted people, first, but also anyone who likes world burn, unhappy endings, where everyone loses, and there are no winners. Hernandez’s Fernando finds out the darkest secret Chastain’s character has to offer, and he doesn’t take it well. The difference is that the audience gives him a lot of latitude in his determination of punishment,but sometimes people cross the line, and then it becomes hard to root for anyone. Arguably, Fernando’s choice here makes it so the audience, that might have been sympathetic considering the revelation, will see his response as troubling and problematic, even if we no longer like Chastain’s waste of a human. The audience still desperately wants to cling onto the hope that things will work out for this ballet dancer, especially since Hernandez himself is a dancer and this is his breakthrough performance.Instead, nope. we don’t get nice things anymore.
What could have simply been messaging on performative charity work, generational wealth and misguided privilege, or even the American dream as seem through the eyes of a dancer turns into a no win strategy, as everyone is a loser, no one deserves a happy ending, and this film decides it should end as frustratingly bleak as it began.
There will be worse films this year. There will be films with far more inept filmmaking, horrendous acting, and awful writing. All of that doesn’t stop me from feeling that Dreams is sort of a repugnant film, one that aims to promise a glimpse into how the wealthy manipulate, even the “good ones”, and instead wants no one to be happy, not even the audience.
If these are your dreams, then what you’re having is actually a nightmare.
Rotten: 2.9/10
