Stéphane (Gael García Bernal) returns to France after his
father dies and gets a job making calendars. He is insecure and spends the
majority of his time wrapped up in his dreams; he can behave how he wants there
because he controls the show. He falls for his neighbour, Stéphanie (Charlotte
Gainsbourg) but it’s never quite how he wants it to be because he doesn’t trust
that she feels the same.
People quite often say that hearing about other people’s
dreams is boring unless you’re in the dream. But I don’t find that at all, I
love when people tell me their dreams. How could they be boring? Literally
anything could happen, they are so fascinating! It’s like hearing a story and
the story is linked to the speaker in ways that aren’t always clear but are
interesting nonetheless. I’m going to recount my most upsetting dream here
because why not, I make the rules. I’m walking down a street and there are
zombies everywhere and they’re crying. Actually, ‘crying’ doesn’t really do it
justice. They are sobbing and they just look devastated. I want to help them
but there’s nothing I can do. They just sit there, staring at me and crying. The sound of them crying has never left me and I’ve never heard
pain quite like it. And I feel like a failure because I couldn’t help them.
Stéphane often confuses dreams for reality and it appears to
be becoming more problematic; he asks Stéphanie to marry him because he thinks
he’s dreaming but then quickly realises and feels humiliated. Sometimes dreams
can be so vivid that it’s almost like it actually happened. I hate the dreams
where I love someone because it stays with me for days after and it just feels
heavy. Exactly like a weight on me. While I don’t normally confuse dreams for reality, I do sometimes
confuse daydreams for reality. I have quite a vivid imagination and when I get
lost in thought I usually construct elaborate scenarios and conversations, then
once they’re over I forget that nothing actually happened. Before I would meet
with people I would try to run through every thread a conversation could take
so that I could be prepared and have answers at the ready. But I try not to do
that anymore because people go off script so often and it throws me off
balance. And it’s so disappointing when you hoped a conversation would go one
way but it steers dramatically in another direction. I still try to prepare but
the script isn’t so rigid anymore.
While I wanted them to be together it obviously
wouldn’t work. His inability to reliably distinguish between fantasy and
reality would cause so many problems. And he is massively insecure, at every
step in their relationship she would have to reassure him. That’s not fair to
her at all. Even though she clearly cares for him, he has to work through that
before they would have a chance of lasting.
“Things will turn out the way you want if you could just
stop doubting that I love you.”
8/10
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