The Dreamer

 The eponymous hero is Raphaël, a hulking caretaker who lives on the grounds of an estate with his badgering mother. He sports an eyepatch, plays the bagpipes, and hunts moles with explosives in his spare time, hanging their pelts from a fence. Late one night, Garance, the heiress of the property, turns up unexpectedly to visit her estate, exhausted and depressed. We eventually learn that she is both a skilled sculptor and a quirky conceptual artist. In one of her works, for example, Garance captured tears culled from all her moments of sadness and placed them into tiny glass vials for display as a mobile.
Fascinated by Raphaël’s musical skill (he practices his bagpipes in the estate’s empty swimming pool) and drawn by his lumbering beauty, Garance asks permission to sculpt him in clay. As requested, he strips down to his undershorts and submits to her creative gaze. As the sculpture takes form, Raphaël becomes infatuated with her. He then becomes a momentary celebrity after Garance shows the work to a group of her artsy friends before a gallery show. Raphaël Thiéry plays the bagpipes in real life: his imposing physicality and primitive beauty are perfect for the role. Emmanuelle Devos makes Garance an engaging character. Director Anaïs Tellenne uses the story’s fairy tale resonances as a means to meditate on the relationship between art and life, dream and reality. Sadly, it is unlikely that this frog will ever become a prince.

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