Dream Scenario
Nicolas Cage excels as a nobody who becomes the most interesting person in the world through no fault of his own.
Worst case scenario: Nicolas Cage
Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) likes to talk about zebras. He has a PhD in evolutionary biology, lives in a large, comfortable house with his loving wife and two teenage daughters and he has a job to be proud of. You could say he is living the dream. But he wants more. He wants to be published. Some might call Paul Matthews a non-entity. He favours fur-lined anoraks, checked shirts and grey slacks, his wife reckons he “scores high in arsehole-ness” and a colleague describes him as being “not that memorable.”
Dream Scenario starts modestly enough, which is encouraging. It’s a late autumnal afternoon, Paul is sweeping up leaves by the pool and his daughter Sophie is sitting beside a large glass-topped table. Then, out of nowhere, objects start falling out of the sky and the table shatters, a shoe lands in the pool and Paul continues with his sweeping. Of course, it’s just a dream. When Paul bumps into an old girlfriend at the theatre, she is shocked to see him because she has been dreaming about him a lot recently. She is not the only one. It seems that his students have been dreaming about him almost constantly, in which he hovers on the sidelines, doing very little…
Essentially a dark comedy about the power of dreams and universal synchronicity (and morphic resonance), Dream Scenario edges towards bigger themes while keeping its cool. Paul Matthews is desperate to be considered “cool”, but as the protagonist in the dreams of others he really has no say in the matter. He is partly a figure of their collective imagination and he doesn’t like the way he is being subconsciously portrayed.
It is to the film’s credit that it maintains its understated tone, thanks largely to the shrewd editing of its writer-director Kristoffer Borgli and to the discerning sound design of Sylvain Bellemare. And Nicolas Cage, who also produces, hasn’t been this good since Adaptation twenty years ago (give or take Pig). Even while playing a schmuck, he manages to retain a certain dignity and humanity, with only the crazy Cage uncaged in the nocturnal fears of others. One scene alone could go down in the annals of cinema history for its exquisite tenor of comic embarrassment. Dabbling in the negative by-products of psychology, fame, cancel culture and social media, Dream Scenario owes its success to the imagination of its Norwegian creator, Kristoffer Borgli, whose baked-dry execution services his material sublimely. And of course there’s Cage’s reined-in, put-upon madness. Great title, by the way.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Tim Meadows, Dylan Gelula, Dylan Baker, Kate Berlant, Star Slade, Joshua Richards, Noah Centineo, Lily Bird, Jessica Clement, Marnie McPhail Diamond, Paula Boudreau, Marc Coppola, Krista Bridges, Cara Volchoff, Nicholas Braun, Lily Gao.
Dir Kristoffer Borgli, Pro Nicolas Cage, Lars Knudsen, Ari Aster, Tyler Campellone and Jacob Jaffke, Screenplay Kristoffer Borgli, Ph Benjamin Loeb, Pro Des Zosia Mackenzie, Ed Kristoffer Borgli, Music Owen Pallett, Costumes Natalie Bronfman, Sound Sylvain Bellemare.
A24/Square Peg-Entertainment Film Distributors.
101 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 10 November 2023. Cert. 15.
