Jessica Chastain takes on one of her most daring roles in “Dreams,” a torrid erotic thriller about power, obsession, art and immigration. Re-teaming with filmmaker Michel Franco , she plays a San Francisco socialite entangled in a tempestuous affair with a talented Mexican ballet dancer, played by Isaac Hernández. Her character Jennifer, the well-heeled daughter of a powerful man, is like Shiv Roy before she went to the dark side; Or, rather, realized she was there all along.
“Dreams,” which opens in limited release Friday, creatively explores ideas about U.S. relations with Mexican immigrants through the ever-shifting power dynamics between Fernando and Jennifer. It’s both captivating and bleak, with a series of sexual encounters that can only be described as feral — “Wuthering Heights” wishes it could have hit the ravenous peaks of Fernando and Jennifer together.
Franco opens his film not on these two, but on a semitruck in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. All we can hear are chilling screams and pounding from those inside. When the doors are later opened, migrants pour out of the truck including the man who we’ll come to know is Fernando, who simply walks away. He walks and walks and walks: Through the night, through the day, in a machinelike trance until he’s forced to stop for water.
Eventually we learn where he’s going with such purpose when we hear him speak for the first time, asking drivers at a gas station, in perfect English, if he can get a ride to San Francisco. When he arrives, he goes straight to a fancy townhouse; After the doorbell goes unanswered, he finds the spare keys, enters and gets himself a snack out of the fridge with all the casualness of someone who has not only been there before, but who’s comfortable there as well. We understand this is not a break in — but what is it? Later that night Jennifer arrives and does not look that surprised to see him in her bed.
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