Dreams

"Dreams" is less like a mismatched romance and more like a case study in benevolent cruelty. Michel Franco's latest film asks us to look closely at how wealth can perform compassion while quietly practicing domination. True love is selfless and does not compartmentalize. At the film’s center is Jennifer, played by Jessica Chastain, a San Francisco philanthropist whose money funds Mexican arts programs even as her day-to-day interactions with Mexicans reveal a transactional, extractive ethic. Jennifer is all about tidy compartments and well-defined margins. Director Michel Franco opens this film with the sound of terror. We hear bodies trapped in a truck crossing the desert, screams ricocheting in darkness before daylight and expulsion. One of those bodies belongs to Fernando, a gifted Mexican ballet dancer played by Isaac Hernández, whose undocumented status becomes the hinge on which every intimacy turns. Franco wastes no time on speeches. The power imbalance is established kinetically, in breath, thirst, and silence. Fernando arrives in San Francisco and slips into Jennifer’s life with the ease of someone who already knows the hiding places. He knows where the spare key is. He eats from her refrigerator. He sleeps naked in her bed. Their sex signals an existing arrangement that works only so long as Jennifer controls the terms. What unsettles her is not the affair itself but Fernando’s refusal to remain where she puts him. The chill does not come from age difference or erotic secrecy. It comes from how fluently Jennifer converts affection into leverage. She runs a family foundation with her father and brother, underwriting a dance academy in Mexico City and a ballet studio for underserved kids in San Francisco. She flies private. She glides from gala to gala. She is the type of donor institutions depend on and quietly fear. Her goodness is managerial. The film’s most damning details are small. Jennifer speaks no Spanish despite her constant presence in Mexico and her insistence on funding Mexican culture. When she gives instructions to her housekeeper, the orders are translated through Google Translate, stripped of dignity. When Fernando speaks Spanish to a waiter, she bristles. The language that holds his life together irritates her. Her philanthropy is expansive, but her ear is closed. Even their sex talk feels cringeworthy and unnatural. Fernando, for his part, wants acknowledgement. He wants to be seen as a partner rather than a liability. When he leaves and finds work cleaning a motel, it is not a fall so much as a restoration of agency. Jennifer’s response is telling. She does not ask what he needs. She hires a private investigator. Care grows into **** Mexico City, Jennifer occupies a gated family home as if it were neutral ground. She visits the academy, notes Fernando’s absence, then confronts his parents with the help of a translation app. His mother’s words cut through even when they are not rendered in English. Leave him alone. Date someone your own age. It is the only adult boundary placed in the film, and it is promptly ignored. What makes Jennifer usurious is not simply that she benefits from Fernando’s precarity. It is that she cannot tolerate a version of him that exists farther than her reach. When his talent earns him a foothold at San Francisco Ballet without her intervention, her pride curdles. She resumes the affair, then places him as a teacher in the new studio, reasserting authorship over his progress. Desire returns with force, but it is braided with bookkeeping. The family’s liberalism is a velvet rope. Jennifer’s father articulates it with exquisite politeness. He is happy she helps immigrants, he says, but there are limits. The phrase floats, genteel, and yet when her brother notices the intimacy, the limits harden. Jennifer responds not by defending Fernando as a person but by protecting her standing. The order of operations matters. After all, Fernando is technically working for her. There are limits to Franco’s approach. The film’s editing and flow leave little room to imagine why these two would like each other beyond appetite and utility. Yet that hollowness may be the point. What looks like love collapses under inspection because it was never equal to begin with. "Dreams" lands as a blunt, by-design parable of North and South exploitation. The affluent wokerati will squirm a wee bit watching this as its force comes from insisting that benevolence can be violent, that support can be predatory, and that speaking the language of justice does not confer it.

Even though it’s set in Mexico and the US, this film has a distinct European feel. This is primarily due to writer/director Michael Franco’s style, which is detached and deliberately paced with minimal dialogue. In the past it’s been his shortcoming, but this time it’s working. Jessica Chastain plays a rich socialite who’s having a passionate affair with a promising ballet dancer (Isaac Hernández, who is really an accomplished dancer). The scenarios alter between her luxurious activities and his continuous struggles…peppered with their HOT erotic encounters. They’re both quietly compelling in their understated performances. Instead of extensive narrative explanation, this drama offers glimpses into their lives. Even with the distant emotions, Franco’s simplified storytelling is quietly affecting and the final scene packs a shocking wallop.