Call for Dreams

Wonderfully shot this surrealist voyage through the mind is a great trip through two distinct worlds as Eko takes us through other people's dreams. The thriller elements work well and are very suspenseful. There's a a lot to love in this movie. Wonderful effort.

Ah well. In the midst of all the enthusiastic reviews here, it falls to me to be the wet blanket.

I would not say that Call for Dreams was a waste of my time: it was entertaining, on its own terms. But the pseudo-intellectual aphorisms are largely nonsensical (the notion of a "dream dreaming a dreamer" is incoherent); the lead actress delivers her lines in bloodless monotones; much of the "Tokyo" we are shown (and where I used to live) is highly unrepresentative; and the Japanese spoken by the Israeli fellow near the end is largely incomprehensible. Among other flaws.

Events bear little relation to each other, but in an abstract work of art, that need not be regarded as a defect. And as others note, many of the shots are fairly stunning.

We were looking for something out of the ordinary to watch this evening, and in this we were not disappointed.

What can be said about a film that takes all the elements of a fever dream, visually pokes your eyes out and then leaves you with a sense of unease wondering if it was a dream or reality? A little of both? "The dream dreaming the dreamer?" Anyway you slice it, Call For Dreams is a visual masterpiece. Color palates, editing choices, sound design, cityscapes, camera angles... This indie films ambition is overgrown - and damn proud of it! With tones of Lost Highway, Blue Velvet, Enter the Void and other cinematic nightmares, Ran Slavin's sophomore contribution to the world of heightened stimulated filmmaking is an insane look into the mind of a man who understand poetic cinema! If you LOVE David Lynch, Gasper Noe, and truly dizzying storytelling, then I highly recommend this film!

With its darkly rich and nocturnal color palate, and its incorporation of Tokyo's most spectral man-made monoliths, the remarkable and shockingly immersive "Call For Dreams" is a rare sensory mindscape in which the lines between the conscious and unconscious are very intentionally and disruptively obliterated. This isn't so much a traditional three-act film as it is a visually and sonically-induced psychological attack of the most subversive and surrealist kind, and one that probably should be accompanied by a warning label -- it's no hyperbole to state that allowing one's self to become enveloped in "Call For Dreams" plays on the head in a way that takes a full day to shake as we reacclimate to life's more grounded, pedestrian normalcies.

Eko (Mami Shimazaki) is a creature of the night. Her downtown Tokyo is one in which the blacks collide with radiating neons soaked by relentless assaults of rain. On one darkly glowing evening, Eko rings up a Tokyo newspaper to place a vague yet alluring ad: "Call For Dreams" is its enticing directive. Soon, Tokyo's dream-afflicted are leaving messages on her tape-based answering machine in which they recount their recurring nightscapes. Eko's provided service is dream reenactment: Like a call girl minus the provision of sex, she travels by scooter to appointments. At one location, a man has repeatedly dreamed of shooting a woman with four bullets; elsewhere, a woman has dreamed herself as a passenger on a plane consumed by a visceral fog. Shimazaki quietly conjures an elite performance: Like a call girl, Eko is at once submissive -- a subject to the defined parameters of a given client's dream. Yet she's also commanding in her wordless leadership of their reenactments; a window through which her clients seek an awakened understanding of their own subconscious experiences. As we watch it all unfold, director Ran Slavin without clear announcement dissolves the sinewy connective tissue between wakened realities and the dream state itself. It's an insidious and shifting line that melts completely as Eko's reenactments submerge into the watercolors of a murder investigation in far-off Tel Aviv: The insinuation is that she's triggered some ethereal crossing of the threshold between the dreams she reenacts and our connected, consciously-lived world.

Very intentionally, Slavin avoids chiseled conclusions and the neat gift-wrapping of plot payouts in "Call For Dreams." Its ambition forbids it, as it aspires instead to install a portal between two states of consciousness, and with a door that swings both ways. This is a truly unique and aspirational film, drenched in gorgeous atmospherics, and it's ultimately one to be digested with careful intent. "Does the dreamer dream the dream, or does the dream dream the dreamer?" - (Was this review of use to you? If so, let me know by clicking "Helpful." Cheers!)

A fascinating, thought-provoking film on the exploration of dreams and their parallels to reality. The film is compelling throughout, moving at a steady pace. But it is the visuals that are most impressive, reminiscent of Blade Runner, on an acid trip. The originality and intriguing nature of the film will keep you engaged through a satisfying journey that draws comparisons to Inception.