What if dreams weren’t random? What if not only could you control your dreams, you were God in your own dream world? Each night, you explore anything, anywhere, with anyone, and only the shortest of guardrails. That’s not exactly the plot of Daniela Forever, the new film from director Nacho Vigalando, but it’s a huge part of it, and the conceit opens up several fascinating and heartbreaking doors.
Vigalando (who made Timecrimes and Colossal), is known for big, high-concept ideas with the visuals to match, and Daniela Forever follows suit. Nicolás (Henry Golding) is a DJ whose artist girlfriend Daniela (Beatrice Grannò) dies in a tragic accident. The loss breaks him until he’s turned on to a new treatment that will allow him to cope by controlling his dreams. He’s supposed to do what the doctors tell him, but he goes his own way, instantly trying to spend as much time with Daniela as possible while controlling every detail of it.
How exactly does that work? Well, Vigalando puts us in Nicolás’ shoes and lets us discover the rules of this world along with him. Soon, he realizes what the boundaries are and aren’t, and all the possibilities that go beyond it. In the real world, Nicolás starts getting better since in his dream world, he’s back with the woman he loves. But everyone, from Nicolás to the audience watching, knows that can’t last forever, and it adds an umbrella of dread over everything else.
To capture these dual worlds, Vigalando shoots reality on Betamax—yes, the 40-50-year-old video technology—and the dreams with modern cameras, creating a huge visual divide. Like Nicolás, we prefer the dreams, just because they look so much better and feel much more comfortable. This in turn creates an near-resistance to reality, further putting us in Nicolás’ shoes. It’s a very clear, distinct choice, but there is a chance modern audiences might not appreciate watching a movie that looks like a 50-year-old TV show.
Still, the dream world effects more than make up for it. Daniela Forever doesn’t have the budget of something like Christopher Nolan’s Inception, but it does its best to make dreams equally special and unique, especially once Nicolás realizes his power in the world. He becomes a pseudo superhero there, which allows for some very cool moments, but also starts raising red flags about this dream relationship with the deceased Daniela.
After giving us a laundry list of scenarios, relationships, and moral dilemmas to ponder, Daniela Forever does struggle a bit to bring everything together in the end. Where the story goes works, but it’s not as clear as the rest of the movie. Nevertheless, this is an excellent film that uses a big, exciting idea to explore the nature of love, loss, depression, glee and so much more. It’s a very personal, very special film, and it’s one of VIgalando’s best.
Daniela Forever recently played at Fantastic Fest 2024, and doesn’t yet have a release date.
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