Jessica Chastain Has Shot Another Movie With ‘Memory’ Director Michel Franco; Rupert Friend and Isaac Hernandez Also Starring
The dust hasn’t settled yet on Michel Franco’s Memory, which just played at the Venice Film Festival and will premiere soon at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the filmmaker is already in post-production on his next movie, titled Dreams. What’s interesting about it is that he was able to keep it a secret from the world, as he reteamed with Jessica Chastain, who leads Memory, and filmed it over the summer in San Francisco.
The news comes from The Hollywood Reporter, who are saying the film was granted an interim agreement by SAG-AFTRA, which allowed it to shoot despite the ongoing actors’ strike. With a budget of $3 million, Franco wrote the script, directed the film, and produced it as well, along with Eréndira Núñez Larios.
Dreams follows the story of a forbidden love between a woman working for an arts foundation (we assume Chastain will be playing that part) and a ballet dancer (who we assume will be played by Isaac Hernandez, who is a ballet dancer himself). Rupert Friend, of Homeland, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Asteroid City fame, is also starring in an undisclosed role (may we speculate he will play a part in the love triangle, making the romance between the aforementioned characters actually forbidden?)
Memory was once considered a possibly strong contender for the upcoming awards season, and though most of the reviews have been positive, the overall sentiment hasn’t gone that far. Franco is a regular at the Cannes Film Festival, where he took films like Daniel and Ana (2009), After Lucia (2012), Chronic (2015), and April’s Daughter (2017). That track record could indicate that Dreams could play during next year’s Cannes.
Jessica Chastain returns with Memory to the big screen after her limited series for Paramount Plus George & Tammy and her Netflix film The Good Nurse. Last year she also had critics’ darling Armaggedon Time. She won a Best Actress Oscar for The Eyes of Tammy Faye in 2022.
The secret reteaming is reminiscent of recent news that Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone have also shot a new movie in secret in Greece.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
