Dreams: Jessica Chastain Plays a Mexican Refugee's Saviour Turned Nightmare
By Liz Braun
Rating: A
The new Michel Franco drama Dreams operates simultaneously as a disturbing tale of passionate obsession as well as a dark social/political commentary.
The story begins with anxiety-provoking scenes of terrified Mexicans coming out of the truck into which they were packed to be smuggled into the U.S. They stumble out into the night.
Isaac Hernández and Jessica Chastain in Dreams
One man, Fernando (Isaac Hernández) walks away quickly and is eventually picked up by a sympathetic stranger who gives him a ride to safety. We watch him make his way to San Francisco and a palatial house, where he finds a key and lets himself in.
When the posh lady of the house returns, she doesn’t seem surprised to see him there at all and soon joins him in bed.
The lady (Jessica Chastain, reuniting with the director after 2023’s Memory), stars here as Jennifer McCarthy, a very rich woman living in San Francisco. Her life is dedicated to the arts, mostly thanks to the family-funded foundation organized by her wealthy father (Marshall Bell). Among other things, she supports various arts endeavours in Mexico, which appears to be how she first met Fernando — he is a gifted ballet dancer. (As is actor Isaac Hernández, who is a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre.)
Jennifer lives in a bubble created by money and privilege. What becomes evident is that her love affair with Fernando is kept separate from her regular life, and not merely for the obvious reasons of age, class and socio-economic status.
When she is with Fernando, Jennifer is passionate but also vaguely patronizing; the sex scenes are intense and fiery, but you may find yourself wondering if there’s some slumming going on.
She controls their relationship carefully.
This is not lost on Fernando, who is tired of hiding his relationship with Jennifer from the people in her world. He determines to make a life for himself in America without her help. Risky business for an illegal immigrant, of course, but Fernando’s talent as a ballet dancer should ensure he can make a new life for himself.
Trouble is, he can’t shake Jennifer. When he stops taking her calls she follows him around the country and insists on inserting herself into his life — or at least, she insists upon regaining the upper hand in their relationship. She moves through the world like a spoilt child, accustomed to getting what she wants.
In the background are warnings from her father and brother (Rupert Friend) that the relationship is simply not on; as her father says, he’s happy she helps immigrants, “But there are limits.” Dreams is laced with racist moments big and small, dusted throughout with ignorance and condescension.
What’s ironic about the way Jennifer treats Fernando — professing her love even as she attempts to control him — is that it’s just the way she is treated by the powerful men in her life: her father and her brother.
Despite the trappings of wealth, her situation is in some ways as precarious as Fernando’s, and she dare not cross those men. She placates and humours and dodges them throughout the story, careful to stay in their good graces. Being rich is her full-time job, and she can’t do it without daddy’s money. And so the story unfolds like some perverse 21st century version of The Heiress.
This is pared-down storytelling that leaves you to draw your own conclusions, but nobody’s dreams are coming true here. Filmmaker Franco seems to assume his viewers will be paying attention, so Dreams is a typically understated affair, just slightly chilly in its detachment and stripped down in action and in dialogue. Money talks, though.
Dreams: Written and directed by Michel Franco, starring Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández, Marshall Bell, Rupert Friend. In theatres February 27.