Our review of the film The Dreamers, mental health crowd

A little girl tries to hold back her parents who are going out to have fun in the evening. She clings to her mother’s skirts while crying. This carefree couple, so typically anchored in the Parisian 1970s and 1980s, will do as they please. This strong sequence of Dreamerstaken from Isabelle Carré’s first film, immediately sets the tone.

This little Élisabeth, who is afraid that her parents will abandon her, will end up building a bumpy adolescence, never being entirely sure of the emotional foundations of her family. It is on this soil of psychological fragility that the conditions of increased solitude and an insatiable desire for comfort will grow, which can sometimes lead to the unthinkable. As the writer Stig Dagerman said so well, “our need for consolation is impossible to satisfy”.

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We feel it, what Isabelle Carré says in The Dreamersthe third largely autobiographical novel, is very close to his heart. The film which transposes his story to the big screen follows suit with gentle intensity. In the first scenes of this sincere and delicate film, we meet an adult Élisabeth (played by Isabelle Carré) who has become an actress. She goes to Necker hospital to lead writing workshops with adolescents in great psychological distress.

Contact is initially difficult to establish. Arms crossed, gazes shifty, back turned, the heroine struggles to interest the small group in what she has to convey to them, until she admits: “Maybe before we start, I should tell you something. I was interned here when I was your age.» Suddenly, the children are all ears. The film then begins as Elisabeth’s memories flood in. The flashbacks keep coming. This big brother’s friend who is interested in her, seduces her, takes advantage of her naivety, and leaves her with an insurmountable heartbreak that will push her “to empty the medicine cabinet.»

In Necker in the 1980s, the child psychiatry services lacked a bit of dynamism and modernity. However, this is where the young girl will find the strength and the time to rebuild herself. The film carefully and delicately follows the resilient journey of this teenager in distress. There we meet slightly broken children, violent bipolar boys, and girls with bandaged wrists and pale complexions like Isker (Mélissa Boros, discovered in the film Alpha by Julia Ducournau) with whom Élisabeth (Tessa Dumont-Janod, disturbing adolescent double of Isabelle Carré) becomes friends.

If the film evokes the harsh and painful subject of adolescent mental health, it does so with great gentleness and empathy. Today, there are more and more of these suffering young people. But this crowd is invisible. Isabelle Carré’s attentive camera observes without the slightest judgment the moments of mutual aid and support of this small community, forced to remain in the wing of the Necker psychiatric building. The daily passage of doctors led by Bernard Campan (faithful partner of the actress since Remembering the beautiful things by Zabou Breitman in 2001) gives rise to sequences between laughter and tears. The group of white coats that the teenagers nickname the “Gestapo” are nevertheless there to supervise the healing of the sick.

The dreamers directly evokes the moral suffering of children and the benefits of art therapy. By discovering the theater, the young heroine will free herself from her dark demons. Thanks to a theater teacher played with warm and reassuring gravity by Nicole Garcia, Élisabeth will end up flying towards her destiny, like the seagulls on the wallpaper in her room who come to life several times in the film.

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From the shadows towards the light, the route taken by the heroine of Dreamers goes as much as a line from Romy Schneider in A woman at her window, that by the discovery of Schnitzler’s piece Mademoiselle Else. Or even by the simple act of observing from your hospital room, the nocturnal sparkle of the small skylights of the Montparnasse tower… like so many brilliant stars that allow you to imagine a more radiant future.