Dour, stark, and unlikeable, Michel Franco’s Dreams build an opportunity to address several contemporary social issues – and then makes a blunder out of every one. Even if taken as sex-dominated character drama – I hesitate to use the word ‘erotic’ – these really are not the people with whom you want to spend 98 minutes.

Franco’s film begins provocatively with a locked truck of screaming South and Central American immigrants, and when it is finally opened by American immigration one of the passengers somehow just jumps out, quietly evades the authorities, and goes hitch-hiking up to San Francisco. This is Fernando (Isaac Hernández), a Mexican ballet dancer who has spontaneously made his way across the border for a tryst with rich benefactor Jennifer (Jessica Chastain). It is a hell of a risk to take for a hook-up, not to mention a strange reason to flirt with America’s heated immigration debate.

Franco works in a stripped-down, functional fashion. Dreams comes without a non-diegetic score – the only music you hear comes from inside the movie, via a character’s radio or some such – and Yves Cape’s cinematography is deliberately simple and uncomplicated. This socially realist approach can work wonders in the right film: here it simply highlights each character’s poor or illogical behaviour.

Jennifer is the middle-aged daughter of the very wealthy donor Michael McCarthy (Marshall Bell), and she and her brother Jake (Rupert Friend) essentially donate money to the arts as a vocation. As with that striking opening scene, it seems as if Franco has settled on a provocative contemporary issue to address. The relationship between a society’s wealthy elite and its art is one that has been going on around the world literally for as long as people have engaged with art. Recent years have seen government-supported art retreat in favour of a rich patron model; here in Dreams Jennifer has invested in a Mexican ballet academy and then picked up its principal dancer for her own sexual purposes. It is blunt, but has potential. Once again, that potential is never properly resolved or addressed. (It is interesting to see Chastain play the role, given she is herself the beneficiary of wealthy patronage: a rare working class actor in Hollywood, her scholarship to Julliard was paid for by Robin Williams.)

It is difficult to justify each character’s behaviour, since they so regularly make inexplicable and unwarranted decisions. The cast generally rise above the material. Chastain is a genuine world-class talent. Hernández, a professional ballet dancer making his acting debut, acquits himself admirably.

A third-act twist seems to come out of left field, and forces the film to abandon its main direction in favour of crude melodrama. The conclusion leaves an ugly taste in the mouth: why that change in direction? What was the ultimate point of this film?

Dreams is screening at the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival. Click here for more information.