I Have Electric Dreams

Nothing catches fire in Valentina Maurel’s I Have Electric Dreams, but the atmosphere is so inflammable, the air so taut, everything could ignite at any moment. True to its title, this cumulatively harrowing tale of a 16-year-old girl Eva (Daniela Marín Navarro) and her estranged, anger-prone father Martín (Reinaldo Amien Gutiérrez) feels like it’s been yanked out of an electric storm. [...]

A less imaginative film would have positioned their relationship as a dichotomy: Martín the deranged, aggressive narcissist versus Eva the luminous, prodigal child determined to help him heal. Maurel’s script is far more complex. Yes, Martín remains – for large chunks of “Dreams” – a spiritually broken and clinically self-absorbed rolling stone. But this isn’t his story; it’s Eva’s. And the portrait Maurel paints of her teenage heroine is a delightfully sinuous, ambiguous one.

Leonardo Goi / The Film Stage