Dreams

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.

A story which might seem the stuff of high melodrama is given a very different charge by Franco’s characteristic rigour – an uninflected cleanness and clarity in Yves Cape’s cinematography, and a minimum of narrative frills, driving the narrative towards a conclusion that is one of this director’s starkest yet.

This is a powerfully intense erotic drama that exposes its central character’s exploitation of both the wealth gap and the age gap to devastating effect. Here’s hoping Chastain’s collaboration with Franco continues because they are doing exceptional work together.

Without much by way of variance, the film spins on and spins out, jumping from austere interiors in Mexico City to San Francisco and back again, putting forward a cogent political read that does little to flatter those looking for anything more.

The abusive push-pull between America and Mexico, the conflict between the exotic fantasy of a Latin lover and its xenophobic underbelly, crashes into two people too ill-defined to function as anything more than symbols.

Despite a series of beautiful gowns worn by Chastain, the film doesn't offer much intrigue nor sociopolitical interest, instead reducing itself to the lowest common denominator by the time it reaches its exceedingly cruel ending.

The film exposes the incontestable American art of getting more with blunt obviousness.