SF-set melodrama is more snooze than sizzle
Bay Area movie fans who enjoy seeing their hometown on screen will get a kick out of the new Jessica Chastain movie Dreams, but everyone else may want to skip it. A soapy psychosexual thriller with more soap than thrills, the picture misses the mark on a promising idea that ultimately goes nowhere.
Mexican writer/director Michel Franco, who directed Chastain back in 2023 in the far better Memory, re-teams with her here for a San Francisco-set tale of wealth, class, privilege, and sexual obsession gone wrong. Chastain plays Jennifer, the dilettante daughter of a well-to-do San Francisco philanthropist (Marshall Bell) who runs a foundation supporting local arts. When the picture starts, we see that Jennifer is involved in a passionate relationship with Fernando (Isaac Hernández), a younger, undocumented Mexican ballet dancer. How Jennifer and Fernando met and began their affair is never explained, which is one of the film’s problems. We’d care more about both characters if we understood a little of their backstory and relationship history.
Instead, all we see is the pair stealing away for passionate rendezvous, including a scene in which Oscar-winner Chastain has to deliver some blush-inducing, Pornhub-level graphic sex talk that is way more cringe than it is sexy. We soon realize that Jennifer’s attraction to Fernando borders on unhealthy at best and obsessive at worst. She becomes increasingly desperate to preserve their relationship after a series of events lead to his deportation from San Francisco back to Mexico City.
Franco seems to want to make a picture about the hypocrisy and often unintentional exploitative nature of do-gooder philanthropists who can’t or won’t recognize their privilege. Jennifer embodies that contradiction. Jennifer is reluctant to reveal her relationship with Fernando to her father and brother (Rupert Friend, appropriately smarmy), or to be seen with him in public. Scenes in which she offers Fernando cash after sex, and pouts that he should speak English when he speaks Spanish with a friendly waiter in front of her, underscore the imbalanced power dynamic between the couple. Such a relevant and timely idea is ripe for exploration, but Franco’s handling of it lacks subtlety. The picture devolves into a sort of Fatal Attraction-esque melodrama, precipitated by Jennifer sharing a shocking, if not predictable, revelation with Fernando. Given Jennifer’s behavior up until that point, however, such disclosure feels unlikely and out of character.
Chastain does her best with the overwrought material, but mostly comes across as sulky and self-absorbed. That may be Franco’s point, but Chastain’s performance doesn’t help us to empathize with Jennifer after her dynamic with Fernando eventually radically shifts. Hernández, an actual former San Francisco Ballet dancer, fares better, mainly because Fernando is a more complex character. We find his actions somewhat more understandable, even as we disapprove of them.
At least San Francisco gets a chance to shine. Several scenes are shot in and around the War Memorial Building and along the Embarcadero behind the Ferry Building, with the Bay looking lovely as ever. But perhaps the most unrealistic element of the whole picture takes place when Jennifer drops in to see Fernando, who is working at The Plough and the Stars on Clement Street. Jennifer zips up and parks right in front of the pub. Nevermind a torrid liaison with a hot ballet dancer; a parking score like that just might be the ultimate San Francisco fantasy.
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DREAMS is currently playing, including at the AMC Metreon, the Apple Van Ness, and the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco, and at the Alamo Drafthouse in Mountain View. It will also play at the Roxie in San Francisco on March 6th, with writer/director Michael Franco in attendance for a Q&A.
