Director: Michel Franco
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández, Rupert Friend
Screenplay: Michel Franco
98 mins. Not Rated.

Though the film wasn’t a major success, the teaming of Writer/Director Michel Franco and Jessica Chastain (Interstellar) led to one of the most underrated films of 2023 with Memory. Seeing them both teaming up for another film had me excited, but unfortunately Dreams is missing the same kind of energy that their previous effort had, and the result is a jumbled narrative that has a great lead performance but no chemistry and a mishandled final act that offers neither thrills nor anything tangible to chew on.

Jennifer (Chastain) is a member of a powerful family, one that has allowed her to work in philanthropy and support the immigrant population through dance. She’s secretly begun an affair with a promising ballet dancer, Fernando (Isaac Hernández, Someone Has to Die). With the inherent controversy about their involvement, his immigration status, and her personal secrets, it becomes difficult to keep their rendezvous from becoming public, which creates strife. Will Jennifer be able to keep her secret or does she have to come clean about her and Fernando?

Dreams opens with a lot of questions, throws us right into the relationship dynamics, and leaves a lot of enticing plot threads in its first act. The problem is that it doesn’t quite have anything exciting in the back half, and most of the dangling plot threads are not resolved in any interesting way. Franco has a lot of ideas he wants to tackle concerning relationship politics, control, and immigration, but it never meshes together, and none of these ideas become fleshed out enough to say or question anything. It’s unfortunate because Memory was full of fascinating relationship dynamics, but the back-and-forth plotting becomes monotonous and dull. The ending tries to change up the dynamic and cobble together some twists and turns, but none of it does much to captivate, and I was left wanting so much more.

Chastain and Hernández are both strong enough in their individual roles, but there’s no chemistry outside of the sexual, so it’s hard to care about the relationship when it’s so heavily built on elements we don’t spend enough time on. They’re both able to perform just fine on their own, but I never believed the passion, which is a large amount of these characters, so when it isn’t there, it becomes very noticeable.

I wash expectations at the door, so going into Dreams, I didn’t let my love for Franco’s Memory cause a letdown. I just think Dreams wasn’t a screenplay ready for filming. There’s far too much jammed in here and none of it cohesive enough. The performances were all solid albeit lacking enough dramatic chemistry, and the filmmaking never made me feel the passion outside of a stellar single-shot sequence on a staircase that made me feel the attraction between these two, even if just for a moment. The entirety of Dreams feels just like one, full of possibilities and yet fleeting away immemorably from the moment one wakes up.

2/5
-Kyle A. Goethe