Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco’s deliberately tough and trying brand of storytelling is often easier to admire in concept than it is to appreciate in execution. That’s undoubtedly the cast for the latest output, “Dreams,” by the prolific writer-director. Franco’s second collaboration with Jessica Chastain continues to draw out impressive nuance in muted shadings from an actress who won her Oscar for going big. Yet their partnership continues to falter along the lines of the dubious treatment of hot-button issues.
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While much of “Dreams” revolves around professional ballet, the film resembles a less structured form of motion. Franco’s stark stylings resemble the cinematic equivalent of interpretative dance, which relies on controlled gesture and motion to unveil submerged passions. However, rather than relying on grand forms of expressiveness, Franco trusts Yves Cape’s camera to catch the subtleties and stillness.
At times, the symbolic symbiosis of the two lead characters in “Dreams” so ridiculously strains credibility that it begs the question of whether this unadorned depiction of reality is a fantasy. (Otherwise, how else can we explain the most cringeworthy dirty talk ever uttered on screen?) “Dreams” literalizes the exchange between an American arts benefactor, Chastain’s Jennifer McCarthy, and a Mexican subject of her patronage, Isaac Hernández’s ballet dancer Fernando. Jennifer takes such a shine to cross-cultural engagement that she goes beyond philanthropy and enters the realm of the passionate with this talented ballerino.
Franco clarifies the dynamics of any relationship rooted in charitable grounds by rendering it in such nakedly sexual terms. With bodily fluids or institutional funds, a patron always expects something in return for their contribution. Jessica causes consistent confusion within Fernando through her mix of selfishness and selflessness. There’s not a bill she won’t foot or a financial sacrifice she wouldn’t make to ensure that Fernando can fulfill his artistic ambitions … as well as her carnal ones. If Sandra Bullock’s white savior in “The Blind Side” were also insatiably horny, she’d look a lot like Chastain’s character in “Dreams.”
Chastain uses these sensual expressions to uncover the sinister intentions underneath a particular brand of white liberal support for immigrants. Franco’s script presents her with a thin caricature whose treachery is readily apparent, but a consummate professional performer manages to create something more interesting. Jennifer is a predator wrapped in progressive clothing, outwardly empathetic but inwardly fighting a constant battle to project a certainty in her moral rectitude. She’s seeking to reassure herself that she’s supporting Fernando as a cause, not a person—yet always doing so at his expense.
Franco manages to wring some interesting tension from this internal conflict, but the pas de deux between Jennifer and Fernando quickly grows repetitive. The stakes scarcely change from the outset of “Dreams.” Jennifer is caught between the limits of helping her father, Michael (Marshall Bell), and brother, Jake (Rupert Friend), tell her to observe—as well as Fernando’s hesitation to be manipulated as a pawn in her self-serving game despite some notable material benefits. The film plods along in a well-calibrated monotony as it circles the only possible ending for such a transgressive, torrid affair.
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“Dreams” is just the latest Michel Franco project that mistakes cynicism for profundity. The director shows a unique willingness in today’s marketplace to stick people’s noses in the negative representations that they inadvertently traffic or uphold. He’s unafraid of treating immigrants like props for pity or turning a Mexican character into the fearmongered rapist as demagogued by the American right wing. These provocations that embrace the dehumanizing discourse around immigration sit squeamishly inside Franco’s sterile aesthetic that already saps the energy out of every frame. His underplayed style of directing actors, too, gives the characters the sense that they lack agency as they saunter toward serving as predestined talking points.
Feeling bad about the state of U.S.-Mexico relations is only natural in today’s climate. Similarly, there is value in Franco’s unsparing look at how the purported helpers are some of the situation’s most nefarious perpetrators. But once the basic parameters of Franco’s thought experiment in “Dreams” are grasped, what’s left is an obvious parable about immigration with little to offer beyond spitefulness and a smugly superior sense of self-loathing. [C]
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