Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Miles Joris-Peyrafitte
Starring: Finn Cole, Margot Robbie, Travis Fimmel, Kerry Condon, Darby Camp, Lola
Kirke, Garrett Hedlund
The gun-toting gangsters of Depression era America have been mythologised,
de-mythologised and re-mythologised to such a degree that it's difficult for
a film set in this milieu to present us with a fresh take. Even at the time,
whether the likes of Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde et al were Robin Hood
types who stole from the banks that had screwed over working class America
or simply sociopathic monsters depended on the publications you read. Such
characters had become legends long before their inevitable deaths in hails
of police bullets.
As such, director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte's
Dreamland brings practically nothing new to this particular
table. Even its gender reversal fails to raise an eyebrow, as this genre is
already stuffed with depictions of female criminals, from Joseph H. Lewis's
Gun Crazy to Lewis Teague's John Sayles scripted
The Lady in Red, not to mention Faye Dunaway's iconic turn as Bonnie Parker.
It's Lewis's film that Dreamland seems most influenced by. As
with that film, here we have an innocent young man willingly led astray by a
glamorous female mobster. It's 1935 Texas, and 17-year-old Eugene Evans (Finn Cole) lives a dreary life, his dreams as untenable as the storm-ravaged land he
lives on is untillable. Eugene escapes through pulp magazines into the world
of gunslingers and bank robbers, a world that lands on his doorstep when he
finds fugitive Allison Wells (Margot Robbie) hiding out in his
family's abandoned barn. Enamoured by her beauty and aura of danger and
excitement, Eugene helps patch up the bullet wound in Allison's leg and
allows her to stay in the barn, sneaking food and even one of his mother's
dresses to the bandit. When Allison promises him a reward of $20,000 if he
can get her across the Mexican border, Eugene sees a chance to finally
escape his dreary life. He's also fallen madly in love with Allison.
Where Dreamland does stand out somewhat is in its ambiguity
regarding Allison. Much like 1961's Whistle Down the Wind, in which a young Hayley Mills finds a fugitive in her family's barn who
could either be Jesus Christ or a hardened criminal, so too does
Dreamland hold back on revealing Allison's true nature. Her
last bank robbery, carried out with her now dead lover (Garrett Hedlund), left five people dead, including a young girl. As Allison tells it, the
girl was killed by a police bullet when the gung-ho cops opened fire, but we
only have her word for it.
Otherwise, this is a formulaic Depression era lovers-on-the-run thriller.
Robbie's charisma and star-power goes a long way to convincing us of her
character's mythical aura and why a teenage boy would fall for her charms.
Young English actor Cole is impressive in his first American leading role,
conveying the aww shucks naivete of a boy with a sheltered life. Several
scenes are snatched from the adult stars by child actress
Darby Camp as Eugene's precocious little sister, Phoebe, who also
narrates the film as a Lola Kirke voiced adult. The narration is
pointless, of the sort that mostly just tells us what we can see for
ourselves playing out on screen. It also doesn't make much logical sense, as
Phoebe narrates episodes she wasn't present to witness. Are we to assume
then that much of the film is the product of a child's imagination, and if
so, why does she at one point dream up a sex scene involving her own
brother?
Dreamland is a polished work, with Rockwellian images of
rural Texas courtesy of cinematographer Lyle Vincent and a moody
twangy score by Patrick Higgins. It's perhaps a little too polished,
as even when its characters are covered in dust they still look too clean
and healthy for dustbowl denizens. Dreamland is most
interesting when it momentarily diverts away from its main plot-line to
offer us little glimpses of rural Texan life, the standout sequence
involving a thigh-slapping performance by an elderly musician who uses his
body as a human drum kit. Such touches make Dreamland a mildly
satisfying curio for anyone with an interest in this period of American
history.
Dreamland is on Netflix UK/ROI now.