Love Beyond Dreams

Romance is a subject which doesn’t get a lot of respect in cinema. Whether or not it appeals to one’s personal tastes, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be done well, and it’s an important part of many people’s lives. It’s unusual to see a film about romance make it to the Oscar-qualifying stage, but to the extent that this one uses the familiar language of the genre, it’s doing so in order to say something different.

Simin (Simin Vaswani) is, like many women in their forties, weighed down by the day to day. She only has one child, but he embraces life with the force of ten, his demands echoing around the kitchen even when he’s in another room. A sitter has been found for him today but still Simin doesn’t really feel up to going out. Her malaise runs deep. She agrees only because she knows that Harish (Harish Vaswani) has arranged something special for her, even though she doesn’t know what it is.

She’s not disappointed. She has always loved European art, he reminds her, revealing his own unfamiliarity with the subject in the process. He perhaps better represents the average person in the area, because the exhibition is almost deserted. It’s fortunate that Simin knows her stuff, because there are no guides and no information beside the paintings, but she is in her elements. As Harish wanders around, she sits on a bench in front of Pierre-August Renoir’s Dance At Bougival and becomes lost in reverie.

We don’t know for certain who the dancers in the painting are, but it is celebrated for the way that it creates a sense of movement, and this is also the real art of this film. Not just the dance sequence that Simin imagines, which is elegantly performed and shot but a little overlong – but the small movements of stationary characters. The fantasy sequence is larger than life, of course, but what matters is Simin’s ability to step back from the perfection she imagines within it and appreciate the idiosyncrasies of the real. Simin Vaswani handles this well, and in so doing speaks to the difference between types of love which the English language is notoriously poor at describing. We might see the timeworn love of her real world relationship in opposition to the youthful, fresh and glamorous imaginary, but critically, there is still room for a spark of passion.

Some people will be attracted to this film for the dancing, which stands out in the context of shorts, where it’s a rare thing to see. The costumes are well chosen and attractively lit, and the choreography works well, though one character has a tendency to stroll carelessly across the dancefloor in a manner that would likely get him into trouble elsewhere. For the most part, though, this is an actors’ film, a showcase for the performances. In a film where very little actually happens, it’s these that convey movement, that speak to the possibility of a new beginning.