Despite its title, Michel Franco's Dreams offers little in terms of hope. The film opens on a bright blue background, the kind of color the sky gifts us on a beautiful day. The title flies forward like the opening credits of the original Superman film. However, we then cut to an unattended semi-truck parked on the outskirts of the Texas-American border. Inside it are dozens of Mexican immigrants: men, women, and children locked in the trailer like cattle being hauled to the slaughterhouse. They're eventually let out by their unfeeling handlers, left in the desert to make their own way in this country.

It's a starkly bleak way of introducing us to this story, a mood that fits the increased contempt the Mexican writer/director has directed at modern society across his recent one-word-title output: Memory, Sundown, and Chronic. The plight of immigrants in this country (specifically this state) has reached a boiling point over the past few months, supporting the notion that a film of this clinical intensity should be produced and distributed. But for as much as Dreams supplies that demand, it does not do so in a skillful manner.

One of the migrants exiting the truck is Fernando (Isaac Hernández), a young Mexican ballet dancer. He's returning to America after repeated deportations, relying on small fish to give him rides from Texas to San Francisco. Once there, he's reunited with the big fish that is Jennifer (Jessica Chastain), who heads the foundation that sponsors the productions he stars in. The pair are also lovers, keeping their relationship a secret for both professional and personal reasons. They embody the quote from Citizen Kane: "To love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows—his own."

There are limits to Jennifer's support, mostly stemming from her father (Marshall Bell) and brother (Rupert Friend), who also run the foundation. They're the type of rich philanthropists who like to be praised for writing a check, but don't want to face the ugly truths of why that money is needed. Every American family originated from an immigrant with a dream, with the door seemingly getting both further away and narrower as time goes on. Fernando isn't a saint either; his frustration at the situation spiraling him into acts of petulance.

Dreams contains about 40 minutes worth of story within its 95-minute runtime, with half the film padded with scenes that don't add or bolster what has already been established. Franco and his regular cinematographer, Yves Cape, create a chilly atmosphere within The City by the Bay, a place of automated food delivery cars serving those on the top of the hill, and undocumented workers stalked by border agents and paid half minimum wage under the table. That dichotomy runs rampant, with Franco offering several examples of it well after the point has already been made.

Chastain is a performer who matches Franco's reserved stillness. Her striking looks and steely presence communicate a life of unfulfilled pleasure, the walls perpetually up. Fernando opens her up to love, illustrated through the film's many scenes that combine intimacy with power. Hernández is a real-life ballet performer; his casting is likely a product of the reasoning that it would be harder to teach ballet to an actor than acting to a ballet performer. He doesn't totally support that notion, never producing the required magnetism.

At the end of all this comes an act of provocation, another regular occurrence by Franco. What should conclude the film on a morally questionable note just leaves a sour taste; the wait is entirely not worth the payoff. There are no more dreams, only nightmares.