This examination of privilege in the modern American moment tries to have its cake and eat it, and while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, the badly-titled Dreams botches the recipe. Considering that ballet is at the center of this movie and director Michel Franco (and his cinematographer Yves Cape) really knows how to film the dancing, it’s a surprise that the movie is so bloodless. On the one hand, privilege likes to be remote from the dirty reality it perches on top of. On the other, this is a story specifically designed to take wealthy white Americans down a peg or two and therefore could stand a little more squalor. The strong core performances in the unpleasant central relationship make Dreams worth seeing, but it’s an exercise in rhetoric instead of emotion.
That unpleasant relationship is between American philanthropist Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain) and Mexican ballet dancer Fernando Rodriguez (Isaac Hernández), who is first shown making a terrifying illegal crossing over the Texas border. With nothing but the clothes on his back and a great deal of luck, he ends up letting himself into Jennifer’s gorgeous San Francisco home because he knows where she hides the key. When she finds him they sleep together immediately, of course, in a way that makes it clear this is not something new but something restarting. And yet while Jennifer clearly feels deeply for Fernando (love doesn’t seem to exist in this world) she won’t go public with their relationship in the slightest. This upsets Fernando a great deal, but now that he’s back in the USA there are other things he can do.
Jennifer works at her family foundation with her brother Jake (Rupert Friend) distributing their father Michael’s (Marshall Bell) money around worthy causes, largely in San Francisco, although Jennifer leads some work in Mexico City as well. She spends a great deal of time and energy in the large house she owns there, though she’s never bothered to learn any Spanish. It’s possible this is her little rebellion, since her family dislikes her work with ‘immigrants’ – though in a shaming qualifier, in my personal experience Irish-Americans are much more likely to be openly racist than hide their prejudices behind anti-immigrant language, and it was a surprise to hear these ugly sentiments expressed so ‘tastefully’. But the family, including Jennifer, are fervent supporters of the arts, which includes box seats at the city ballet. This means Fernando is accepted as a worker, but not as a potential romantic partner. And yet he’s the only person in Jennifer’s life who doesn’t do exactly what she wants when she wants it. Of course this is why their physical relationship is so good, but Jennifer’s life is on her terms, and her terms alone.
When Fernando posts up outside the theatre dancing for a ticket, he is spotted by the creative director and offered a place in the dance corps almost immediately. His talent is so serious his legal situation is waved away (Mr. Hernández is in real life one of the major talents currently working in North American ballet, and not a bad actor either) and the way the camera holds back to watch Fernando dancing are the only true moments of lightness in this story. The confident, not arrogant, ease with which Fernando moves through the world is clearly based on supreme skill. But while Jennifer might not have that level of personal confidence, she has arrogance instead, with private jets and expensive clothes and staff on retainer to indulge her every whim. Her work involves her being applauded for her generosity and good taste everywhere she goes, and Ms. Chastain is a great choice as someone whose appetites are matched only by her restraint.
As a metaphor for what it’s like being an immigrant in a new world this is pretty solid stuff, but despite this complicated, sexy set-up, there’s no meat on these bones. There’s no sense of the current political moment (which is probably wise) but more troublingly there’s no sense of what Jennifer can offer that Fernando absolutely, positively cannot get elsewhere. It’s very clear why Jennifer is attracted to the much younger Fernando, but we never quite learn why Fernando loves Jennifer so much he’s prepared to risk suffocating to death in a truck in Texas for her. A little scene in a high-end restaurant, where Fernando’s brief chat in Spanish with the waiter ends up with Jennifer beside herself with rage, demonstrates a kind of self-centered spite no one with self-respect should tolerate. And it’s hard to argue the benefits of American superiority when the best work you can find is changing sheets in a by-the-hour motel.
Mr. Franco, who also wrote the script, never manages to make his human metaphors for the relationship between the USA and Mexico anything beyond an idea. Even the ending, which combines cruelty and self-pity in some truly unattractive ways, handles the final twist of the knife without staining the sheets. There’s no muddy reality here, which is a big shame, since some dirt under the fingernails would have made Dreams attractively human instead of pixels on a screen.
Dreams recently played at the London Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.
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