By Fiorela Gonzales

Dreams, the new film by Mexican director Michel Franco, explores immigration, wealth, and power through a relationship between a wealthy philanthropist and an illegal immigrant fighting for his dream to be a professional dancer.    

The film begins with a shot of a freight truck parked next to train tracks during the daytime. No sounds, no dialogue, nothing but the shot of a truck sitting there. We’re there for a full 30 seconds before the shot changes to the same freight truck, but it’s now nighttime and the truck is shaking as pleas for help are heard muted from inside the truck. Once the truck opens, we follow Fernando (Isaac Hernández), tired and dirty, as he scrambles out of the truck and walks through the night. At this point we don’t know who he is or why he came from the truck. First impressions would assume immigration, but it’s unclear where he’s going or how he got here. He stops at a diner in Texas and gets immediately kicked out, only to be picked up by a woman who drives him to her home and gives him food and water. From there he hitchhikes his way to San Francisco until he gets to a nice house on a hill. He rings the doorbell, but no one answers. He breaks in, helps himself to food from the fridge and passes out in the bed. Later that night, Jennifer (Jessica Chastain), finds him in her bed and this is where 13 minutes into the movie, we get our first line of dialogue.

From this moment, there are no flashbacks or explanations. We learn who these characters are and their relationship with each other moving forward by putting together the context clues the movie allows us. We learn that Jessica is a very wealthy philanthropist who, along with her father and brother, run a charity for immigrant dancers. One of the locations they had recently set up a ballet school was Mexico, which is where Fernando came from. He is an exemplary ballet dancer who is trying to follow his dancing passion in the United States. We learn that Jessica and Fernando have been in a relationship with each other for at least 6 months. Fernando is young, Mexican and undocumented while Jessica is wealthy, white, and unwilling to compromise on her or her family’s image.

Ultimately, Fernando decides he doesn’t want to be a secret to Jessica anymore, so he leaves her which causes Jessica to fall into a deep obsession and search for him through any means necessary, including going to immigration lawyers and paying any amount to help find him. Fernando turns up in front of the prestigious ballet school in San Francisco, dancing outside looking for a ticket. He’s spotted by a person of privilege from the company and invited to come audition for them, where he ends up getting the lead. Jennifer insinuates to Fernando that they could be seen together in their relationship moving forward and he comes back to her hoping this means their relationship will now be in the open. At this moment, he has everything: the lead in the prestigious San Francisco ballet company and a beautiful, wealthy girlfriend whom he loves and she loves him. Unfortunately, immigration services are called on Fernando and he’s deported back to Mexico, crushing all of his dreams.

The film handles a lot of power imbalances within the relationship of the two leads: wealth, power, age, legal status, and ethnicity. Though Jessica and her family are wealthy philanthropists who support immigrants, there’s an extent to it. As her father says to Jessica after her brother discovers Fernando in her home, “you know I’m happy that you help immigrants, but there are limits.” This one sentence summarizes the thesis of the film: white people are comfortable with immigrants as long as those immigrants stay in their place. This is seen again when Fernando lands the lead in the ballet and the jealous white dancer in the company accosts him and his immigration status because of it. After this moment, Fernando has drinks with other immigrant friends who deride the attitude of ignorant white people by saying “we cross the border, we wipe their asses and they’re fine with that. But you take a job from one of them and they kick you to the curb.” The fact that Fernando is an illegal immigrant is never hidden, but it’s never seen as a hindrance to any of the white people in the film until they have something to gain from it.

The film explores the relationship between Jessica and Fernando with zero hesitations. It’s clear from the top that Jessica is heavily obsessed and will use any of her power and wealth to track down Fernando at any given moment. While Fernando cares for Jessica, he just wishes for a relationship in the open and doesn’t understand why she hides him. This is a question that lingers in the air throughout the movie. There’s an age gap, but not really a problematic one. Fernando is just younger than Jessica. There’s a wealth gap, but Fernando is also the lead of a prestigious ballet company. He’s an illegal immigrant, but that could also be easily fixed by what Fernando’s friends suggest: marriage. It ultimately comes down to the shame Jessica feels for dating a Mexican man of lower class than her. It’s clear through the juxtaposition of her hiding their relationship in San Francisco, yet when they’re together in Mexico, she holds his hands and hangs out with his friends. She has so much shame – whether it’s self-imposed or imposed by the family, or both – it ultimately causes both of their downfalls.

The film doesn’t shy away from the horrors of immigration that most white people refuse to see happening around them. It also showcases how a lot of white support for immigration only goes so far as it looks good for them (and their foundations). Something that is also very interesting in the film that hasn’t been explored in many movies dealing with immigration, is illegal immigration from Latin American countries within Mexico itself. Once Fernando is deported and he heads through Mexican immigration, you see the immigrants from other Latin American countries being treated like animals and pleading for their lives and rights – much as you would see immigrants doing in US immigration points.

Ultimately, the film ends in shattered dreams. For both parties involved, but it is the social class of Jessica’s family and the shame of dating an immigrant that brings both their worlds crumbling down. Dreams is an impressive film about immigration and power, shot beautifully and patiently forcing you to look and keep looking to understand and feel. Michel Franco delivers a timely film that speaks to hypocritical white liberalism and its extent of activism.

4 stars.