Magnificent Obsession: Franco Finds Love is a Hopeless Place
Michel Franco lassos Jessica Chastain into his continued class conflict examinations in Dreams, an intimate portrait of a doomed love affair ruined by power hierarchies. Reuniting with Chastain after 2023’s Memory (read review), Franco fashions his headliner as an elitist who chooses to remain oblivious about her exploitative tendencies, even while seemingly head-over-heels in love with a younger, Mexican dancer. Ironically, they share similar versions of the same dream, and clearly neither are being realistic about what the end goal is supposed to look like. Toxic tendencies from both parties generate shifting balances of control, with which Franco spins his wheels on until he’s ready to deliver the venom and violence underlining nearly all his films.
Drifting title credits enlarge mockingly to introduce harsh reality as we meet Fernando (Isaac Hernandez), a handsome ballet dancer who has illegally crossed the US border in the back of a semi. He makes his way to San Francisco to the home of his lover, Jennifer (Jessica Chastain) a well-heeled philanthropist who works for her wealthy father (Marshall Bell) alongside her brother (Rupert Friend) at their illustrious foundation. Theirs is a passionate, tempestuous relationship defined by an intense physical attraction to one another. But they come from vastly different worlds, and Jennifer has no intention of making their relationship public, leading Fernando to abandon her. Jennifer obsessively tracks him down only to finagle her way back into good standing, committing to meeting his demands to be part of her entire world. However, a brief flirtation with allowing him visibility as her partner leads her to make.a drastic decision which will ruin them both.
In one of the more bizarre moments from Lauren Bacall’s filmography, she croons an ungainly ballad called “Hearts, Not Diamonds” in the 1981 thriller The Fan, also about unhealthy romantic fixations. “I’ve played with diamonds for so long it’s hard to recognize a heart,” she sings, which is more or less the speed of Franco’s approach to Jennifer’s perspective in Dreams. It’s painfully clear Fernando will never be granted parity, at least not in any legitimizing way, which is clearly evidenced by her father and brother’s reactions. Some of these exchanges, however, are revealed a bit too obviously. While these issues weren’t as evident in Franco’s previous English language films like Chronic (2015) or Memory (2023), the brief spats of dialogue leadenly deal with the sentiments of its characters. Marshall Bell navigates the awkwardness of telling his daughter how he loves that she supports immigrants…but there are boundaries to such ‘support.’ Likewise a handful of minor supporting characters engaging in conversations serving narrative purposes are often stiff and rough hewn.
Chastain, who is as visually captivating as ever, is consistently enrobed in white, which beyond suggesting the apparently irreproachable privilege of her class, is a visualization underlined by a reference to Black Swan, part of Fernando’s audition for a lead role he eventually snags in a dance company. Both parties delve into the dangerous dualities of their personalities, and both experience a sense of powerlessness at least partially instigated by the other. However, as with nearly all of Franco’s films, there’s a provocation in his narratives which always borders on the problematic.
From a distance, it would seem Dreams is suggesting Neo-liberal philanthropists are merely alleviating their guilt they never have any intention of actually confronting. And, when push comes to shove, the racial other will always resort to barbarism. However, when approached within the exact context of these two people and their various defining characteristics, Dreams takes pains to assert these increasingly desperate attempts for control of a relationship they’ve already allowed to be defined by everyone else are specific acts of viciousness. In the world of Franco, humankind always resorts to base brutality, and this is a hemorrhaging revenge film suggesting the cruelest crimes are those of the heart.
Reviewed on February 15th at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival (75th edition) – Main Competition. 100 mins.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
