'Dreams' Review
- Lara Kretler
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Release Date: 02/27/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Drama. Romance. Thriller.
MPAA: Not Rated.
Distributor: Greenwich Entertainment.
The Verdict: A Mistake
Michel Franco’s Dreams really messed me up… it’s a fairly slow moving erotic thriller bookended by shocking and horrific scenes. The climax was so jarring and awful to witness that I almost wish I hadn’t watched to begin with. That said, the story feels important.
Don’t watch Dreams expecting a romance, despite how it is marketed - it is a drama with elements of horror. What is meaningful about this film is the way it highlights the plight of undocumented immigrants and the constant vigilance and peril involved even once they are working and living in this country.
Pivotal to the plot is a May/December relationship where the older partner is a woman. We see her treat the younger, poorer Fernando badly and it hits harder because it’s not something we’re used to seeing done to a man. Their story of exploitation is one seen in many films with a man as the older partner and a woman as the younger - but seeing it reversed here somehow makes the power imbalance seem more shocking.
From the beginning, I wasn’t a fan of Jessica Chastain’s character of Jennifer McCarthy - a woman that is stiff, wooden and predatory in her treatment of her young Mexican lover. She makes no attempt to learn any Spanish, despite the fact that she works often in Mexico and supposedly loves Fernando. Their relationship was troubled from the start and as a romantic, I wanted to root for them, but their relationship was a power struggle too problematic to survive.
Isaac Hernandez was impressive in his role as Fernando, the young dancer from Mexico who will do just about anything to make his American ballet dreams come true. He risks his life crossing the border into the U.S. illegally after being deported.
We see that he is truly a talented dancer when he earns a spot in the San Francisco ballet through nothing but his grit and pure talent. We see him working hard, both at ballet and the various under-the-table jobs he’s able to secure for his survival.
Fernando is not making good choices, including his involvement with his rich lover. She wants to keep him almost as one does a pet, providing for all of his needs but not willing to show him off or be a true partner to him. He makes valid attempts to leave her and disappear from her life, but she wins him back through obsessively stalking him across two countries, hiring a private investigator and ultimately giving him tickets to the ballet.
When Fernando finally wakes up to how destructive and undermining she truly is, his reaction is violent and out of character, setting off a chain of events that ultimately do not end well for anyone.
If you like jarring movies with twists - and possibly one of the most scorchingly hot stair sex scenes ever filmed - then you might like Dreams. For me, it’s not one I would choose to watch again.
