Review: 'Dreams,' an erotic thriller set in the ballet world, stumbles over larger ideas

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

Mexican writer-director Michel Franco (“Memory”) explores dynamics of money, class and the border through the spiky, unsettling erotic drama “Dreams,” starring Jessica Chastain and Isaac Hernández, a Mexican ballet dancer and actor.In the languidly paced movie, Franco presents two individuals in love (or lust?) who experiment with wielding the power at their fingertips against each other.The film examines the push-pull of attraction and rejection on a scope that’s both intimate and global, finding the uneasy space where the two meet.Chastain stars as Jennifer McCarthy, a wealthy San Francisco philanthropist and socialite who runs a foundation that supports a ballet school in Mexico City.

But Franco does not center on her experience, but that of Fernando (Hernández), whom we meet first escaping from the back of a box truck filled with migrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border.He’s abandoned in San Antonio on a 100-degree day.His journey is one of extreme survival, but his destination is the lap of luxury: a modernist San Francisco mansion where he makes himself at home and where he’s clearly been before.

A talented ballet dancer who has already once been deported, he’s risked everything to be with his lover, Jennifer, though, as a high-profile figure, she’d rather keep her affair with Fernando under wraps.He’s her dirty little secret but he’s also a human being who refuses to be kept in the shadows.

Movies We’ve mapped out 27 of the best movie theaters in L.A., from the TCL Chinese and the New Beverly to the Alamo Drafthouse and which AMC reigns in Burbank.As Jennifer and Fernando attempt to navigate what it looks like for them to be together, it seems that larger forces will shatter their connection.In reality, the only real danger is each other.The storytelling logic of “Dreams” is predicated on watching these characters move through space, the ...