Writers and Director: Michel Franco
Director Michel Franco returns to Mexico for his latest semi erotic drama, Dreams starting Jessica Chastain and screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025. A story about two worlds colliding and, to an extent, the limits of philanthropy where giving and actually caring are slightly different things, Franco has lots of interesting ideas but gets a bit lost in his subject matter, missing opportunities to delve deeper into character motivation or the ways in which US immigration rules restrict the arts. With little connection between the leads, Dreams leave you feeling a little restless.
When ballet dancer Fernando risks his life on an illegal journey across the Mexican border, his secret and much older lover Jennifer is pleased to see him but keen to conceal their long-standing relationship. Finding work illegally with a San Francisco ballet company, Fernando pushes Jennifer to be honest with her wealth family, but as major arts donors, protecting the McCarthy name takes priority.
Dreams creates quite an interesting central dilemma for its characters that examines both wealth inequality in which the female protagonist has all of the power in terms of money, status and legal standing which she chooses to protect, concealing an implicit judgement about the age gap relationship with a man possibly 20-years younger than her. And Jennifer’s sexual desire for Fernando as a driver of behaviour begins to tell an interesting story, promising character insights that never deliver.
There is hardly any chemistry between Chastain’s rich but remote Jennifer and Isaac Hernández’s more easy going but differently demanding Fernando, and spending little time in conversation, it is hard to see how their attraction started or what sustains it. It could be sex if Franco were interested in exploring their desire relative to Jennifer’s social position, previous marriage and infertility, all hints dropped in the film, but chooses not to, removing any depth the film might have had. The meeting and breaking-up becomes tiresome, laden with odd encounters where nothing much is said and heavy with subtext that doesn’t quite connect. Hernández is no match for Chastain as an actor so none of the power imbalances are properly investigated and it is deeply awkward seeing these actors perform graphic sex scenes with no sense of desire.
Franco’s final act is bizarre, an attempt to rethink that power dynamic with some shocking and irredeemable behaviour on both sides that never properly emerges from the things we see them do. Yet all it does is reinforce how dislikeable all of these characters are and how little we care about their lives. There is so much more here also about the art form that Fernando loves, why does he want to work in America, what is the Mexican ballet scene like and why does Jennifer connect with it – although we only see her attend ballet, never talk about it with enthusiasm or critical understaning? This film sets up well but makes all the wrong choices. A missed opportunity.
Dreams is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2025 from 8-19 October.
