Get the latest gossip
‘Dreams’ Review: A Stone-Cold Jessica Chastain Reunites With Director Michel Franco for a Thorny Moral Drama
The controversial Mexican filmmaker subvert's Jessica Chastain's image, portraying an American do-gooder as an undocumented immigrant's worst nightmare.
Among the Hollywood stars of her generation, Jessica Chastain has been uniquely selective about the characters she agrees to embody, resulting in a filmography that empowers women (from “Molly’s Game” to “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) and centers on social issues (“Miss Sloane,” “Woman Walks Ahead”). His illicit passage is an upsetting process, the horrors of which are depicted without comment in Franco’s cold observational style (he’s a product of such austere European auteurs as Robert Bresson and Michael Haneke, resisting the touches — like a musical score or manipulative camerawork — others might use to trigger an emotional response). Instead, the film’s kinky control games and unapologetically graphic sex scenes are electric (they may well shock arthouse crowds), but it’s the subtext that makes this clear-eyed and detail-focused moral drama so compelling: There’s the age difference, the wealth gap, the lure of opportunity in the U.S., the constant threat of arrest and the way some Americans sexually exoticize foreigners.
Or read this on Variety
