Valentin Merz | Rêver comme lui (Dream On) aka Dreaming Like Louis / 2020

the complications of paradise

by Douglas Messerli

 

Valentin Merz and Claude Muret (screenplay), Valentin Merz (director) Rêver comme lui (Dream On) aka Dreaming Like Louis / 2020 [19 minutes]

 

Paul (Leon Dave Salazar), whose family has a beautiful chateau in the country, invites Louis (Simon Frenay) to spend the summer with him since his sister, their mother having recently died, is determined to soon sell it so that they buy another house in Brittany.

   The beautiful lovers are pretty much alone, except for their neighbors Sabine and her husband Pierre (Catherine Babier and Jean-Charles de Quillacq) who visit them twice and another time in Louis’ dreams. Paul is a pianist and occasionally plays the out-of-tune piano, but mostly during the long hot summer days, they sleep, have sex in various manifestations, take walks in the magnificent countryside, and play tennis. It seems nearly idyllic.

   But there is a deep tension between the two. Paul seems tired and nervous, and Louis begins to have surreal hyper-real dreams, some of which involve S&M-like control—in one such dream Sabine and Pierre appear in uniform, Pierre demanding Paul strip and perform fellatio, when Sabine scolds him for it, replacing him with Louis and in another Louis dressing up as a woman who Paul rims but in the process truly hurts him. In fact, after a while we cannot tell what is real and what is a dream. Paul goes into town to get his medicine but ends up fucking the druggist. Louis kills Paul with a chimney poker.

    Is there something malevolent in the chateau itself or is their relationship simply falling apart. It is impossible to know in this lush paradise where the dreams stem from and why they’re plaguing both men. But it finally ends up with Paul madly digging with his bare hands into the earth, with Sabine comforting him. When Paul declares everything’s going wrong, her answer perhaps expresses the calm clarity of older age: “It’ normal. Life is complicated.”

    Perhaps it is the fact that nearby stands a cemetery in which are buried all of his previous family members. Are his fears being transferred to Louis? And what is the medicine that Paul has obtained from the druggist. Is death the specter that is destroying their relationship?

     It ends with Louis’ strange question that seems to be haunting both of these beauties: “I was wondering. If you killed me how long you would be able to hide it from the others.” Paul asks, “Why are you thinking about that?” “Well…since we’re alone.”

     Paul reassures him, “Everything’s going to be alright my love….”

     And so the film ends, with laundry hung out to dry.

    This odd little love story is always on the verge of becoming a horror tale, but pulls away from the genre as it returns to the perfection of everything surrounding the inner terror both face. Sometimes our dreams are far worse than our lives.

     Swiss director Valentin Merz has created an intriguing angst-filled film.

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).