Curator Watchlist
A chilly, provocative melodrama about class, desire, and border politics, but it seems to trade emotional complexity for shock and provocation. The performances and visual polish draw attention, yet many viewers found the film’s treatment of sex and power manipulative rather than illuminating.
13% (17,121)
Where to watch: Starz
2025 · 1h 38m · ★ 13% (17.1K)
Director: Michel Franco
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández, Rupert Friend
A powerful socialite and a promising ballet dancer begin a dangerous affair. When he secretly crosses the US-Mexico border, she takes desperate measures to protect their future together.
Michel Franco
Teorema, Freckle Films, AR Content, Eastern Film, Greenwich Entertainment
Jessica Chastain, Isaac Hernández, Rupert Friend, Marshall Bell, Eligio Meléndez, Mercedes Hernández, Tatiana Ronderos, Bobby August Jr., Nessa Dougherty, Jayden Leavitt, Lee Braithwaite, Phillip Caires, Nicholas Gould, Scott Jordan, David B. Schively, Rachel Thurow, Harris Warren, Eduardo Gonzalez, Hugo Costa Ramos, Julio Bernal
Starz, Philo
A chilly, provocative melodrama about class, desire, and border politics, but it seems to trade emotional complexity for shock and provocation. The performances and visual polish draw attention, yet many viewers found the film’s treatment of sex and power manipulative rather than illuminating.
Michel Franco’s drama is built on a volatile mix of desire, status, and coercion, with the US-Mexico border looming as both a literal and moral fault line. Jessica Chastain gives the film its most forceful presence, and the production clearly knows how to frame wealth, beauty, and entitlement as a kind of armor.
But the movie’s bluntness is also its limitation. What begins as a charged class-and-romance story increasingly feels engineered to shock, and the use of sexual violence will read to many as exploitative rather than revelatory. The film is disciplined and visually assured, yet emotionally it can feel cold, schematic, and punishing.
If you respond to severe social dramas that refuse comfort, there is enough here to hold your attention. If you want nuance, tenderness, or a more thoughtful handling of its most disturbing material, this is likely to leave you frustrated.
Lena M (0.5★) · 540 likes
I can't help but wonder why all these male directors are so very interested in the depiction of rape in their films. In this very mediocre film it even takes away everything else that happened . So both characters are horrible people? Great, thanks for nothing.
Franke (1★) · 400 likes
If you need a sexual assault scene to make the audience feel something that just means you have no idea how to transmit anything and you're grasping for fucking straws. Sexual assault is not a plot twist, it is a desperate try to give a movie some meaning. Let's stop profiting off of SA, this is not cool little art resource, it is a real fucking issue that affects real people
shookone (4★) · 371 likes
personal desire vs social realities, power dynamics of class vs gender. Michel Franco stages a linear tale of alleged love - romanticism though will never overpower the possibility for violence mankind is inflicting on each other. lust as the result of pure projection - but everything will be put back in the ground the hard way when social reality hits. Dreams goes a very straight path without frills and fuss. every scene fulfills a need for the narration, every act… more
Rue (1.5★) · 334 likes
Thought this would be a powerful story on migration and ambition. In the beginning it felt like it tried to deconstruct prejudices on class and gender but to me it did quite the contrary and left me with an odd aftertaste.
B E R T (3★) · 248 likes
Jessica Chastain saw the wardrobe that she’d get to wear and immediately said “YES”. Absolutely gagged by those outfits, gorgeous, the movie around the outfits? Meh, it’s ok.
A severe, unsettling study of desire, control, and self-destruction with an icy emotional temperature.
A sunlit but poisonous web of erotic tension, class resentment, and destabilized relationships.
A lush, manipulative romance-thriller about desire, deception, and shifting power.
A doomed love story shaped by secrecy, social pressure, and the cost of crossing boundaries.
Stylized, cruel, and emotionally punishing, with a strong sense of menace beneath luxury.
A seductive class thriller about aspiration, envy, and the violence hidden inside longing.
For a more restrained, elegant romance shaped by social constraint and private risk.
A classic study of desire curdling into obsession and control, with escalating dread.
A sleek morality tale where sex, status, and self-interest collide with fatal consequences.
A sharp, cynical thriller about manipulation, appetite, and ruthless self-preservation.
Cold, formal, and deeply unsettling, with characters trapped inside a cruel moral logic.
Provocative and controversial, it examines trauma, power, and control with dark wit.
class conflict, power imbalance, desire and obsession, migration and borders, sexual coercion, wealth and privilege, emotional manipulation, social realism
social thriller, erotic drama, bleak tone, border politics, class divide, power dynamics, psychological tension, prestige melodrama, contemporary drama