Dreamers DVD

 "Dreamers" is a very entertaining film.
An elderly Asian man tours Hollywood's landmarks, ruminating on the dreamy power of movies. Suddenly, we jump to the American heartland, where two boys growing up in a strict religious community plan to run away to Hollywood. This playful, oddly forked opening introduces a remarkable new talent in writer-director Ann Lu. She not only sagely dramatizes the power of movies - that it means escape, adulthood, even a substitute for religion, to these boys - she keeps us mindful that the world is, at all times, a larger place than any individual's story might suggest. When the two boys reunite in Hollywood as young men, one is streetwise and resourceful, the other naive and trusting, but both are interestingly deluded, as Lu conceives it. Neither has a monopoly on either courage or truth. This debut feature is tremendously impressive in its honesty, its refusal to cheat us with formulaic plot twists or ready-made insights. Lu, a native of China, is sharply attuned to our local dialects of greed, hope and spiritual desperation. She has a marvelous ear for what people are not saying, matched with an ability to make illuminating sense of where their hearts are leading them. - F.X. Feeney
Submitted by a reviewer (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
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