DESCRIPTION
The film is the story of a theatre actor (Paolo) and the problems he encounters when his girlfriend's (Celine) dreams became part of his reality. Her dreams are lived by him in such force that he can no longer distinguish them from his everyday reality. He becomes the victim of her dreams and the help that is offered by his lover – psychiatrist (Deborah) is useless.
20 minutes, 16mm, colour, WonderWorks Productions, 1997.
Writer, Producer and Director.
SYNOPSIS
Synopsis:
WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!
The theatre actor Paolo is the main character in the dream of his girlfriend Celine. While she is watching the rehearsals, through her dreaming, she manipulates his reality in such force that Paolo, really living her dreams, falls off the stage. This cause the awakening of Celine and the anger of the director Jack.
In his dressing room, the actor is thinking about the accident and Jack comes and visit him. The director warns him to be more serious during the rehearsals. He also gives him a package from a secret fan making a bit fun of the actor. Celine, worried about the intensity of her dreams, tries to talk to her lover. Paolo, instead, does not want to know and sends her home with indifference.
The same night Celine is sleeping, waiting for his phone call and at the same time Paolo enters again her dreams. On the street it rains only on him and he meets Marilyn Monroe, who drives a convertible and tries to shoot him. Scared, he goes to his lover ex-psychiatrist Deborah. Free from the danger of the dream, he spends the night with her. She comforts him and calms him down.
The next day in his dressing room, Paolo meets Jack again. The actor, a bit worried, tells his director about what happened to him the night before, getting back only an other warning for the play. Celine is sleeping in the theatre and, in her dream, Marilyn Monroe comes and visits Paolo, but this time she manages to shoot him. Paolo faints in the dressing room and wakes up again as a puppet. He is then forced to play together with another puppet in front an audience of many Celine, watching the show with ironic enthusiasm. Afterwards Jack wakes up Celine stopping the dreaming. He cannot find Paolo anywhere.
Paolo is together with Deborah in her place. Paolo told everything to her and asks for help. She gives him some advice and wishes to dream so deep about him. During the dinner the day before the Premiere, Paolo is thoughtful and receives the last angry warning from Jack. Paolo and Celine are walking down the street at night and he tries to investigate about her dreams, thinking that they could be related to the strange things happening to him, but without success.
They spend the night together. Celine dreams again, but this time it is a nightmare: Paolo is dead on the stage wearing his costume. When she gets back to bed, she finds out that he is not only dead in her dream, but also in the reality.
Notes:
This film wants to bring up the idea on how the everyday reality, made of small and simple things, can be influenced and changed by a dream reality, created by the fantasy of the dreamer, or, like in the film, by who is dreaming us. The idea of the film is therefore putting the two realities together, making the dreams a continuation of the real reality. In particular living as the main character and in first person the dreams of somebody else.
The main actor in the film finds himself already part of a fictional world as the theatre, where dreams come true. In real life he continues to act, but this time the director of the comedy of life is a dreamer, his fiancé, which loves him and guides him subconsciously through her fantasy in a new reality. He ends up totally confusing this dreams with the real life and becomes inevitably their victim.
The choice of an actor as the main character of this film underlines the Chinese box structure of the story. Inside the everyday life, set around the theatre stage there is the dream life set around normal routine environments, such as all the exteriors, the interiors of everyone’s home, the dressing room etc.
Therefore the dreams are playing the main role in real environments, the real life instead, is shown and “mise en scene” in the fictional and magic world of the theatre stage.
The only exception is the studio of the psychiatrist-lover, which is a sort of shelter from the dreams filled with rationality, and simple and down-to-earth feelings. The content of the dreams always has something mythical and a sort of “law of retaliation”: when the actor wakes up transformed into a puppet as moved by the puppet master-dreamer who is also the audience-sub conscience.
At the end the dreamer has a nightmare. There is no happy ending showing a sometimes pathetic interpretation of the dreams as wishes, but the film shows a more classical meaning of the dreams. These can be a different interpretation of the experiences lived in the real world, edited by the dreamer and therefore seen as a source of inspiration and parallel reality.
