Jessica Chastain gives one of the Gutsiest performances in her career in Michel Franco’s “Dreams”, Here as a San Francisco -philanthropist in love with a younger, undocumented Mexican immigrant that she is convinced to switch to the United States.
Emotionally lobotomized by his rich scion -father (Marshall Bell) and brother (Rupert Friend), Jennifer (Chastain) gives money to good causes and believes she contributes to something bigger good. Meanwhile Fernando (Isaac Hernández, in a striking function film Debut), a 10-year-old-Younger Ballet Dancer from Mexico City, is on her every mercy that tries to start a life in America after an upsetting journey across the border.
The characters can function metaphorically as stand-ins for the United States and Mexico and how these countries, as these people, need each other. But politics aside, what does the “New Order” director’s latest film and his second with Chastain after Dementia -covered romance ”memory,“Throb and thrum under the filler’s cool liberation is the tangled love story in its core.
“Dreams“Who shot on site in San Francisco 2023 during the Sag-Aftra strike on a temporary exception, distributes Franco’s usual style of all scenes that develop for a while and with limited repetition. The acquisition title premiered at Berlinale in competition This week, where Indiewire sat down with the director and star to talk about making this tricky and upsetting film, which with the right distributor is prepared to be among 2025’s most controversial films. It is already among Most acclaimed movies in Berlin Competition, where the jury is led by Todd Haynes. They will want to recognize this burning film, which somehow has a hurt of an end.
Chastain’s latest movies, including her Oscar-winning “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”, often contains a childbirth, feminist streak. Not so in this hopeless movie, although Chastain makes the case that Jennifer is more feminist than you might realize.

“I think she is the product from the patriarchy because she has been born and raised and learned about love in a family where the father makes all decisions and brother makes all decisions, and they treat her like a child who can’t take care of herself, “Chastain told IndieWire at Grand Hyatt in Potsdamer Platz, just before the film premiered a few hours later.” At the museum, the father introduces the brother with all his performance and goes Then, “My beautiful daughter, Jennifer, who has been by my side since college.” So she is a pet. So I think it’s a case for feminism because see what it does for us women who are not treated as equal. ”
Director Franco has met controversy in his home country Mexico and in the states for their dark portraits of socio -political identity. For example, with “new order”, He got a backlash In order to throw the shows in an apocalyptic social uprising at one percent as perceivedly more dark -skinned than their lighter skin oppressors, who store for some idea that brown people in Mexico are bad and wild.
“I don’t have to be liked as a filmmaker, for people to think,” Oh, he’s a good person. “I have no problems with it. I am more interested in representing life, he said.” What happens between the two countries and what Mexicans and immigrants live in the states is much more dramatic than even what we portrayed (in ‘Dreams’). So I wasn’t shy for it. The most important thing is that it’s true.
You can argue that Franco’s filmography of Late began to take a ride against the more hopeful, when “Memory” threw Jessica Chastain as a healthcare worker who falls into a romance with Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), a former high school with dementia, whose care falls into a romance with Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), a former high school class with dementia, whose life is constantly refreshing because of memory loss every day.

“I am interested in love stories, but not a love story of design. Even the end of the “memory” is a challenging, “Franco said. “It is hopeful because it satisfies the audience because there is some hope in the characters together, but you imagine the rest of their lives, and it is very challenging.”
“You can imagine in ten minutes, he turns to her and says,“ Hi, my name is Saul. “That’s why we like to work together,” Chastain said.
The idea for “Dreams” began with the character of Chastain, perhaps a man before the idea of the age-gap romance between Jennifer and Fernando showed up. “And then you were like. “Maybe they’re lesbians!” There are many different directions we went in, ”Chastain said.
But it was when they met 34-year-old Isaac Hernández, a Mexican immigrant ballet dancer educated at the American Ballet Theater and now works in Bay Area, that the essence of “Dreams” fell into place.
“He made a TV show and a dance movie. The dance film was not so satisfactory. I think he did a TV show where he also dances, ”Franco said. “When I decided that he would act on the movie, I went to meet him at the 10,000-man show, and before the show he came out with a microphone and, he said, to 10,000 people, in Spanish, ‘ Hi, ‘very shy,’ I have never done it before the show begins, I want to thank you all for being here. It is such a personal project. My heart is …, “and I am,” Bullshit Artist! ” And me Looking around and everyone is crying before the show. He is such an actor that he already has everyone (crying). Then I told him, the bullshit you did, you knew you were doing it. He said he had already done it in Monterey, or I don’t know. ”
“I have had some difficulties because some people are like,” oh the age gap, “said chastain.” It is (only) a little over a decade, and now I feel that I am 60 years old. We met the day before we started shoot. We met for breakfast and immediately I (Michel) said: “He is lying about his age.”
Franco added, “A day on set, a Mexican extra, a woman, came to me and said,” It’s amazing that you give your son such a great opportunity. “

“Dreams” makes an impression with a number of volatile sex scenes between the actors, where Hernandez’s skill as a ballet dancer becomes even clearer in the way he lifts Chastain, throwing her on a bed or on a stairwell.
“The scene I’m most supplemented with is the stairs, and that was Jessica’s idea,” Franco said.
“(As it was) written, it was supposed to be in the living room. The living room is clean sunlight. There are windows everywhere, and the camera, you can’t cut anything. Where can we film this? “Said Chastain.
Actors on a Franco film do a little repetition, although it was required for the explosive scene where Fernando, after Jennifer has broken up with him by the shame to be seen together by her father’s colleagues, takes her physically and erotic surprisingly. Imagine Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher” when it comes to charged, two -sided degradation. And that’s all that strikes one of the bleak Franco ends ever. (“You didn’t tell me (the end) until you decided that he would become a ballet dancer,” Chastain said.)
Chastain added, “We did a lot of repetition for the sex scenes for the intimate scenes. In all honesty, the Stairwell scene, I said, here is the reality: I make a movie with a professional ballet dancer. I don’t want to be naked in this whole movie with a naked ballet dancer. We don’t need that picture. So how do we block it in a way that is still super sexy and talks about their need for each other? “
Franco said that he and Chastain are already working on an idea for a third collaboration. “I’m glad we’re friends, so I don’t have to beat her anything. We talk because I want to see what it triggers in her. Last week we talked, and she said she has an idea, and we will work on it. So it goes both roads, Franco said.
“I can’t play a racist again,” Chastain suggested. “We have to change it.”