University professor Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) is an easy man to ignore. A deliciously peevish performance from Cage paints a character who wears his grievances as stubbornly as the anorak that rarely leaves his back. With his fretfully twitching upper lip and a whining inflection that turns everything he says – even his own name – into a pissy, worming complaint, Paul exists in permanent umbrage.
Everything changes, however, when he starts to turn up, initially as a lurking, inscrutable onlooker, in the dreams of strangers. So widespread is this inexplicable phenomenon that Paul starts to enjoy a viral celebrity, a newfound fame that he embraces, toothily and gracelessly, as something that he clearly feels was his due all along. His students finally start to pay attention in class. He is courted by a slick marketing hotshot (Michael Cera). He even finds himself the subject of erotic interest, resulting in a sex scene so mortifying you’ll want to scrape it from your memory with a penknife. And then, just as suddenly, the collective unconscious shifts. Dream Paul goes from a benign to malign presence, from passive to horribly, threateningly active. And the public reaction to real Paul skews accordingly.
The follow-up to the brutal satire Sick of Myself from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli, Dream Scenario further mines the director’s fascination with fame – the cost of it, the fickle nature of it, the indignities of it. It’s a savagely funny showcase for Cage at his very best. But the picture sours somewhat in a third act that departs from crisp character study to target cancel culture, losing some of its biting humour in the process.
