Dreams

Michel Franco’s Dreams follows the fraught romance between Jennifer McCarthy (Jessica Chastain), an heiress entrenched in her father’s business empire, and Fernando (Isaac Hernández), a young and prodigiously talented ballet dancer from Mexico City, whose ambitions have been repeatedly thwarted by immigration laws. The setup brims with potential, teasing a collision of class, race and aspiration. Yet, in execution, Dreams falters – particularly in its misguided attempt to subvert expectations, instead relying on blunt-force melodrama and a final act that borders on the gratuitous.

Jennifer, a Shiv Roy-esque figure, is hardened by her familial entanglements; her father’s approval looms large, while the settled, traditional lifestyle of her brother, Jake (Rupert Friend), underscores her struggle with commitment. Her relationship with Fernando is doomed from the start – she is wary of marriage after a failed first attempt, while he naïvely boasts to his friends that he will wed her within a year. Their romance exists in the shadow of Jennifer’s powerful family, who dismiss Fernando as an interloper, a nuisance rather than a serious partner. But his own past is just as troubled – having been deported from the country a decade ago for performing on the street, Fernando has returned to the San Francisco Ballet with the same single-minded intensity that fuels his craft.

As expected, Chastain delivers a solid performance, while American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Hernández brings a striking physicality to Fernando’s role. Yet Dreams ultimately stumbles over its own ambitions, unravelling when Fernando, newly released after another detention by ICE, is met with an unexpected confession from Jennifer. What could have deepened their ill-fated dynamic instead veers into lurid, misjudged territory – Fernando imprisons Jennifer in her own home to give her a taste of her own medicine, only for the film to squander any nuance with a predictable and gratuitous act of sexual violence.

What had been a study in fractured ambition and class disparities becomes an exercise in shock tactics, flattening Fernando’s complexity into something far more sinister. His dreams of ballet are, by the story’s bleak conclusion, irreversibly shattered – a tragedy, certainly, but one that lacks the emotional weight it should carry, given how clumsily the movie has handled his descent.

Franco has rooted his work on discomfort, but Dreams miscalculates the line between provocation and exploitation. The film’s early tension suggests something sharper – an interrogation of power, love and opportunity – but its second act replaces ambiguity with excess, leaving a bitter aftertaste.

Christina Yang

Dreams does not have a release date yet.

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