DREAM SCENARIO reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
Stars: Nicholas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Lily Bird, Michael Cera,, Kate Berlant, Dylan Baker, Tim Meadows, Dylan Gelula, Jessica Clement.
This darkly comic and surreal comedy/fantasy about a man who mysteriously begins appearing in peoples’ dreams boasts a terrific comic performance from Nicolas Cage, with many of his usual tics and neurotic mannerisms on full display.
Paul Matthews (Cage) is a modest, unassuming and bland biology professor whose career has hit something of a slump. He is married with two young daughters but somehow still feels inadequate. When we first meet Paul, he is raking up leaves while his daughter Sophie (Lily Bird) sits at an outdoor table next to the pool. Suddenly objects begin to mysteriously fall from the sky. While Sophie panics, Paul seems unmoved by events and keeps raking, oblivious to what is unfolding around him. This turns out to be a dream.
When Sophie recounts the strange dream over breakfast the next morning Paul is a little upset thinking that his being merely a passive observer is somehow a reflection on him as a person. His understanding wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) reassures him that it was just a dream and warns him not to take it too seriously.
But there are a couple of other encounters in which people suggest that Paul somehow seems familiar. While out enjoying a night at the theatre with Janet Paul encounters a former girlfriend who announces that she has had some strange dreams featuring Paul. And when he arrives at university to deliver a lecture for his usual biology class Paul is surprised to learn that he has also been appearing in many of his students’ dreams. And, as with Sophie’s dream, he learns that that he does nothing there either, just mysteriously observes from the sidelines.
But this strange occurrence causes Paul to become something of an overnight sensation and a minor celebrity as his experience goes viral on social media. Paul is approached by advertising agents Trent (Michael Cera) and Mary (Kate Berlant), who try to convince him to be the front man in a series of commercials for a soft drink. Paul only wants to write and publish a book and finally get his due as an academic.
When he tries to capitalise on his newfound reputation and monetise his fame, the dreams begin to take on a nastier, darker and more violent nature. He now is a malevolent Freddy Krueger-like presence. Suddenly those same people who previously were curious about him are now repulsed by him. Paul’s life begins to fall apart as he becomes a pariah.
Sporting a receding hairline, a slouched posture and shabbily dressed, Cage delivers close to a career best performance as Matthews, creating an awkward, flawed but somewhat endearing character. Nonetheless he is superb here and delivers an increasingly unhinged performance as Paul’s life begins to fall apart. Nicholson is good as the practical Janet.
Dream Scenario is a timely and thoughtful examination of the darker side of celebrity and the pitfalls of fame, our obsession with fame, what happens when our fifteen minutes of fame ends, the pervasive nature of social media platforms, collective consciousness, and even cancel culture. This dark comedy marks the English language debut for Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli, and it shares some common themes with his previous film Sick Of Myself, a scathing satire about one woman’s desperate desire for fame and attention achieved through surgery to disfigure herself.
Borgli’s narrative takes a few unexpected turns and, like other surreal and quirky films such as Being John Malkovich or Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind it keeps audiences off guard and never quite sure where it is headed. But while the quirky, offbeat Dream Scenario is driven by an intriguing premise, Borgli seems unable to sustain the intensity for the duration and the film falls away in its third act. Horror director Ari Aster (Midsommar, etc) is credited as one of the producers of Dream Scenario, which is probably why the film’s second act has such a disturbing and unsettling quality.
★★★
