Dreams
by Hope Madden
Early in Dreams, Michel Franco’s latest, a wealthy white guy at a board meeting says, “Why Mexicans? Isn’t there anybody here we can help?”
It’s a pristine boardroom, just the questioning Jake McCarthy (Rupert Friend), speaking to his benevolent father (Marshall Bell), and his philanthropic sister, Jennifer (Jessica Chastain). She gives him a playfully annoyed shake of the head, hands him a dossier to sign, and promises her “little projects” are all tax write offs. She and her father share a “what are we going to do with this guy?” smile and roll of the eyes.
Franco’s film is not subtle.
Chastain cuts an elegant figure, Franco’s cinematographer Yves Cape lingering over every meticulous ensemble, fetishizing each pair of impossible heels. She never smiles. There’s a hand ready to help her out of every vehicle as its door opens for her. She has never a hair out of place.
Except when she’s having energetic sex with Fernando (Isaac Hernández), the talented ballet dancer who’s just crossed the border and most of the US on his own to be with her.
The erotic thriller’s psychosexual politics are eye-catchingly surface level, with a heavy-handed examination of the American Dream driving the action. The role reversal—that the wealthy philanthropist is a woman and the beautiful ballet dancer in distress is a man—allows Franco provocative opportunities.
One of the most interesting things about Franco’s films, including Memory, also starring Chastaine, and 2022’s Sundown, is that, at just past the halfway mark, each becomes an entirely different film.
Dreams follows that path as well, although with less satisfying results.
Like Memory, Dreams considers power and consent in sexual relationships, and again, the latter film comes up shorter. Dreams seems more obviously built to provoke, more relentlessly opposed to choosing a side.
That feels less provocative and more irresponsible here. Whether, in the final image on the screen, we are expected to see the evil of privilege or the righteous glare of vengeance, what’s important to note is that no white men were harmed in the making of this film.
