{"id":4032,"date":"2025-07-12T10:39:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T10:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/4032\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T10:39:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T10:39:04","slug":"dreams-director-michel-franco-explains-why-his-jessica-chastain-drama-had-to-be-so-brutal-and-cruel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/4032\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Dreams’ Director Michel Franco Explains Why His Jessica Chastain Drama Had to Be So Brutal and Cruel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michel\u2019s Franco\u2019s latest film, \u201cDreams,<\/a>\u201d is sure to start conversations. Starring Jessica Chastain as a wealthy American and newcomer Isaac Hern\u00e1ndez as a Mexican immigrant with incredible talent for ballet, it centers on the fraught relationship that their characters form. Exploring questions of power, abuse and loss, it\u2019s still seeking distribution in the United States, though it screened as part of the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n

The film marks the second collaboration between Franco and Chastain after the 2023 drama \u201cMemory<\/a>,\u201d which similarly had a central story dealing with abuse. However, where that film found moments of hope, \u201cDreams\u201d is intentionally cruel, building to an ending that has left festival audiences divided. To hear it from Franco, he wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n

In an interview with TheWrap, the filmmaker discussed working again with Chastain, why he isn\u2019t interested in playing by conventional rules, and a conversation he had with Hern\u00e1ndez about concerns he raised.<\/p>\n

\"ACourtesy of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival<\/p>\n

Without getting into spoilers, how did you talk about this film with your collaborators? How was it when you first went to Jessica Chastain after working on \u201cMemory\u201d together?
The way it happened with Jessica was on a lunch break I told her that I had this other idea that I wasn\u2019t necessarily pitching to her. Jessica and I, we have a very good relationship so it\u2019s very easy to talk without having to think too much with how to say things. Both when I\u2019m directing her and in life, everything is very straightforward. So I told her the thing without the guy being a ballet dancer, just an immigrant. She liked it a lot.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know what the end was going to be, exactly. I only understand that he was a ballet dancer so that could be the end. But something similar was going to happen. The first thing Jessica said immediately was it couldn\u2019t be more different from \u201cMemory,\u201d so that\u2019s a good reason to say yes. Plus, we both were enjoying shooting \u201cMemory.\u201d She immediately understood that she\u2019d be portraying a character that would challenge audiences and she wants to do that. She doesn\u2019t want to be comfortable doing crowd-pleasers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

She is playing one of her more cruel, almost hateful, characters, but buried under repressed desire and shame. How did you go about constructing the scenes where it would go from sex to violence, sometimes at the same time?\u00a0
Well, we both had exactly the same film in our heads. The same goes for Isaac, the new comrade, the ballet dancer \u2014 we all had the same film in our heads. The way I work with Jessica especially, or Tim Roth<\/a>, with actors with that amount of experience and talent, I don\u2019t direct them much. We talk a lot after they read the script, we go scene by scene and we discuss. But there\u2019s a lot of surprise elements. I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re gonna do on the day. We don\u2019t rehearse either. So every morning is just me and the actors and I tell them, \u201cWhat would you do? Action.\u201d No direction. Jessica has done her homework, she always knows what she\u2019s going to suggest.<\/p>\n

Once that makes sense, I invite the cinematographer into the room and we figure out how to shoot it. So yeah, that\u2019s pretty much it. It gets interesting, I shoot in chronological order, so by week three or four, you can pretty much see the film from beginning to past midpoint. And Jessica would join me on every Saturday and we would sit down and watch the film. So she\u2019s also invested in the storytelling to that extent and we may change our decisions according to what we\u2019re seeing. We usually add scenes that aren\u2019t scripted or we simply change things or we realize that we\u2019re repeating ourselves a little bit and so on. She can also see how her character is coming to life. If something is not working for her, we\u2019ll reshoot or whatever. Not that I\u2019m doing what she wants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\""April"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019re collaborators. \u00a0
Absolutely. If I\u2019m tired at the wheel, I feel like it\u2019s better to let her take over and do the driving for a little while. I trust her to that extent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When it came to the component of sexual violence and assault, what was the conversation like?\u00a0
It was present from scratch. In that initial conversation, I did know that she would do something very aggressive to him, then confess, and then something else would come back. The shift of power dynamics was there from the very beginning. It was an unavoidable, terrible direction that everything is inevitably taking. <\/p>\n

Jessica also knows that I\u2019m one of the few filmmakers to go far. I mean, only if needed, only if it makes sense. But we\u2019re not shy about that. I think many filmmakers would like to do it and they have the courage and the actors probably too, but studios and producers often prevent that from happening. Because they\u2019re thinking about pleasing the audience and redemption and stuff like that. In a way, I\u2019m taking advantage of film conventions and how lame most movies are. They make it easy to surprise an audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Do you think that approach has made it difficult to get distribution? I\u2019m especially thinking in the context of America with questions about immigration.\u00a0
No, I don\u2019t think so. This is the first movie \u2014 I know this isn\u2019t what you\u2019re asking \u2014 that comes out on a larger scale in the Czech Republic. And that\u2019s fantastic. I think that has to do with the body of work that I\u2019ve been building, plus the film has attracted enough attention for that to happen. That\u2019s the same for many countries where my films are doing well and they keep finding audiences. Times are challenging for film distribution. Yes, of course if I would make a film that\u2019s more conventional it would be easier to get into the American mainstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sarvin\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not your interest?\u00a0
Well, no, I would love for that to happen and to sell 50 million tickets. But only without sacrificing my vision. If I\u2019m doing what I\u2019m have to do and then it\u2019s successful, I\u2019m very happy. But I wouldn\u2019t change anything trying to chase commercial success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are histories of immigrants being demonized as rapists, as violent sexual predators. Was there any concern about that history and the way your film engages with that in a very explicit way?\u00a0
It was discussed, mainly with Isaac, because he was going to play represent that. For him, it was troubling. But I told him that I was never going to make the film where all Americans are portrayed as evil and the immigrants are just good, with only positive qualities. That would be bulls\u2014. So it made sense on the page and we just kept going in that direction. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a scene where Mexican authorities left immigrants from Latin American countries and Venezuela to burn alive because they start a riot. That\u2019s based on a real incident that happened in Mexico where 80 people died exactly the way it is depicted in the film. So there\u2019s also that additional layer where Mexican authorities treat other immigrants the way Mexicans and others are treated in the States. I think it\u2019s important to show all slides of things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When you said that it was troubling for Isaac, how was it troubling?\u00a0
Well, exactly for what you said. He was afraid to be proving Trump right. I told him I don\u2019t care about that. I care about what this man would do when he learns that he was betrayed in such a way. She says she did it for love and he\u2019s been stripped from power, he\u2019s been powerless forever, he\u2019s been played with. It just seemed like a reaction his character would have. I\u2019m not justifying it, of course.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What was his response?\u00a0
He was reassured by Jessica, too. He was convinced that had to happen and that we couldn\u2019t do the film we wanted to do without that. So Isaac had to agree. I mean, he knew it from scratch, but that was his biggest point from when he read the script. He wanted to do the film, but he pretty much never acted before, so for him it was interesting and challenging.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michel\u2019s Franco\u2019s latest film, \u201cDreams,\u201d is sure to start conversations. Starring Jessica Chastain as a wealthy American and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4596,88,4597,4598,4599,206],"class_list":["post-4032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-dreams","tag-entertainment","tag-jessica-chastain","tag-karlovy-vary-film-festival","tag-michel-franco","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}