‘Dreams’ review: Jessica Chastain powers Michel Franco’s dance-based drama

Dir. Michel Franco. Mexico/US. 2025. 100mins

Love and dance make up one of many longest-established {couples} in cinema. When the dance occurs to be ballet, it’s possible that the choreography will include an intense fringe of amour fou – and for those who combine in real-world politics, issues could also be headier and darker nonetheless. The concept of the erotic pas de deux as energy play is on the coronary heart of Goals, the Berlinale competitors entry from uncompromising Mexican writer-director Michel Franco.

 Instantly rooted within the politics of sophistication and nationality

Franco’s second collaboration with Jessica Chastain, following 2023’s Reminiscence, Goals pairs the American actor with acclaimed Mexican dancer Isaác Hernandez, at present of the American Ballet Theatre. With its paradoxically innocuous-seeming title, it is a love story of types, however one straight rooted within the politics of sophistication and nationality, with a newly acute relevance given the brand new US authorities’s intensified hostility to immigration. Two terrific central performances, and Chastain’s star energy in a risk-taking, sexually charged function, ought to carry ample consideration to a daring, crisply-executed auteur assertion.

The movie begins with a disturbing picture acquainted from too many information tales – a lorry seemingly deserted by a roadside, with folks trapped inside crying out to flee. When the doorways are opened from outdoors, the passengers – Latin Individuals making an attempt to cross into the US – are summarily robbed by bandits, however one man staggers off and begins a protracted and demanding journey north. Finally arriving in San Francisco, he enters an opulent city home, and will get a rapturous, sexually heated welcome from the girl who lives there. The younger man is Fernando (Hernández), a Mexican ballet dancer, and she or he is Jennifer (Chastain), the rich daughter of an especially highly effective magnate (Marshall Bell).

Like her father and her brother (Rupert Buddy), Jennifer may be very a lot engaged in philanthropical actions. Whereas Goals is sparing with again story, it’s obvious that she and the fairly youthful Fernando met on the Mexico Metropolis dance centre that she helps, and have launched into a mutually passionate relationship. He has risked his life crossing again into the US to be together with her – but additionally within the hope of pursuing his dance profession there. 

Whereas Jennifer lavishes consideration on Fernando, he quickly realises that her extremely codified visibility as a socialite prevents her from acknowledging their relationship in public. Asserting his independence, he retains his distance. Later, he reappears and lands a spot in a San Francisco ballet firm. However issues solely run easily for therefore lengthy – and finally, the couple’s energy imbalance begins to play itself out in a brand new and really disturbingly amplified kind.

Whereas the movie initially seems to pitch itself as a realist character-based psychological drama, within the method of Reminiscence or Franco’s earlier Continual, the story’s political dimension, along with a excessive diploma of stylisation, carry it considerably nearer to his apocalyptic imaginative and prescient of sophistication battle New Order (2020). Right here, the stylisation very a lot revolves round Jennifer, who – as Fernando complains – is somebody taking part in a component. Jennifer seems for a lot of the time in hyper-poised guise, stepping out and in of limos or sporting nearly absurdly stylish attire (costume designer Mitchel Travers excels); all this cleverly performs on Chastain’s personal star picture, usually related to a lofty, distant froideur.  

If Chastain and Hernández don’t make an instantly apparent match, that’s partly the purpose: they play two folks attracted due to their distinction, however who might not finally be capable of overcome it, both to their satisfaction or society’s. Hernández has a straightforward, relaxed type of depth, and his lean, kinetic grace as Fernando on the dance flooring and in every day life (to not point out the full-on intercourse scenes) spotlight the distinction with Jennifer’s hyper-formalised social guise – a distinction knowledgeable by all of the variations of nationality, wealth and sophistication. Given Isáac’s vocation, the intercourse scenes between him and Jennifer have a heightened balletic, athletic high quality, indicating undiluted mutual want however not essentially of the reassuring Valentine’s Day selection. 

A narrative which could appear the stuff of excessive melodrama is given a really totally different cost by Franco’s attribute rigour – an uninflected cleanness and readability in Yves Cape’s cinematography, and a minimal of narrative frills, driving the narrative in direction of a conclusion that’s certainly one of this director’s starkest but.