After the supposed love of his life, Alex, dies after a night of drugs, Antonin finds his world crumbling around him. His mother leaves to move back with her family and the young man finds himself hustling on the streets of Paris. But all is not as it seems when he meets Juliette. Though Antonin loves her and she claims to love him, there is a seedy part of her past and present which isn´t out in the open, something that will rock Antonin to his core.
I can´t wrap my head around "I Dreamt Under the Water." Does it want to be a look at the downward spiral a young man goes through when everything he knows is gone? Does it want to be a meditation between being gay and bisexual? Is its sole intent to titillate and tease the audience without ever delivering the goods? Or does the French film aspire to be more than all of those combined, failing in the process? Judging by the theatrical trailer included in the bonus features, I´d have to conclude titillation was at the forefront of the film´s purpose.
That trailer runs just over 6 ½ minutes in total and is perhaps the most sexually graphic film advertisement for a non-porn production in history. I only mention this now, as opposed to later on in the Extras section to hone in on one point: if you cut together a trailer involving the genitalia of both genders, a transsexual, a close up of a freshly deflowered anus and other such images, doesn´t it stand to reason these body parts should play a major role in the film? To be honest, the trailer piqued my interest. What kind of story was going to be wrapped around all of this?
Co-writer and director Hormoz lacks the gumption to take the story where, I think, he wants it to go. There was a perverse need at some point in the writing process to make the narrative user friendly, to reign in the camera from showing the truly seedy images it wanted to. "I Dreamt Under the Water," at its core, is about sex and drugs and how both mold a person into the being they are. In the absence of the trailer, "Water" might have accomplished the goal. With it, though, the production is a massive let down.
The chief narrative problem is the lack of time given to any one relationship or plot point. We get from the first reel Antonin feels a deeper connection to Alex than just friends, yet we´re never given a reason. Is it purely physical? Is there something in their shared past which draws Antonin to Alex? We know they´ve never actually had sex and Antonin hasn´t had another gay sex experience. There´s no reason to like either of these characters, let alone root for either of them. (Good thing, too, because Alex doesn´t stay in the picture very long.)
The verbal explanation of Antonin´s feelings for Alex never add up to his actions. He doesn´t attend the funeral? (Not a spoiler, read the back of the box.) He does little more than sulk for his dead friend? I don´t get it. If this person is an unrequited love, every fiber of his being should be shaken. It´s not, as far as we can tell. Maybe it´s enough for some audience to take Antonin´s word for it, that he really is distraught and teetering on the edge. The evidence is hard to come by: the young man doesn´t dive into the world of hustling because of the death-its due to his mother leaving-nor does he take up drugs-he is adverse to them, as we see late in the film.
"I Dreamt in the Water" continues like this, with obvious questions never being answered and relationships being forged out of nothing. And that´s why the eerie netherworld it inhabits is so damn frustrating. With an engaging lead actor (Hubert Benhamdine) and a production crew seemingly ready to create a provocative film, the story flat lines in a hurry. There is a distinct lack of warmth, of caring, of empathizing with anyone on screen. The most sympathetic character turns out to be Baptiste, one of Antonin´s tricks and an eventual employer (and boyfriend?).
The look of the film makes up for all of the narrative's problems. There are very few brightly lit scenes in the film, especially near the finale. The object, I suppose, is to make it hard for us to see what´s going on, just as the world is becoming harder for each of the characters to navigate. Despite the darkness, there is also a gritty brilliance to the production design. This isn´t a story about rich-or even middle class-people trying to make it in the world; it´s about the poor, the downtrodden, the ones society has effectively given up on. Hormoz, for his part, makes us feel as though we´re standing next to Antonin at every juncture, seeing what he sees the exact way he sees it. There is no delineation between what the audience knows and what the character knows.
VIDEO:
Whatever I may say about the film itself, the 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer looks good. Not good in the conventional sense, but good as in adding to the overall depressed feel of the film. There is a layer of quite noticeable grain from beginning to end, adding a sense of grittiness to the narrative. It works in this film because of the subject matter. Colors don´t pop off the screen; they´re not designed to. Instead, they are muted, a pall cast over them. One problem of note is an annoying line of distortion on the right hand side of the screen. In dark scenes, it is non existent; it turns green when a red floods that side of the screen.
AUDIO:
I was similarly impressed with the audio track (French 2.0). It´s nothing spectacular, yet it does what it needs to do with a minimum of issues. Dialogue is mostly clean and free of distortion (outside of one yelling match near the end) while the sound elements are mixed at appropriate levels. There is a slight bit of barely audible hissing in quiet scenes; again, it´s nothing to be worried about, really. The English subtitles are big and clear enough to be seen with no problems.
EXTRAS:
The aforementioned trailer for this film is included, along with those for other TLA product: "Bangkok Love Story" (3:16), "The Houseboy" (2:37), "Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma" (2:48) and "Boy Culture" (1:46).
PARTING THOUGHTS:
I don´t understand how "I Dreamt Under the Water" is being touted as sexually frank, brutal or savage. It´s more by the numbers, not daring enough, all hype and no payoff. The underlying relationship-Alex and Antonin-is never explained or exploited for any story value. Their scenes together are remarkably few and dialogue-free, making it even harder for the audience to create a bond between them. I haven´t even discussed Juliette or Baptiste in any real detail and they both merit more screen time than Alex.