Dream Lover

The whole film has the intensity of a dream, and Mr. Kazan selects his fantasy elements with great care. Read full review

It’s a tricky, harrowing little film. Kazan keeps things fairly schematic--every plot point is secured, every look is “knowing"--but the overall effect is ambiguously unsettling. Read full review

Kazan is particularly good at balancing the incongruously sunny surface of the Reardons' privileged lives and the growing sense of darkness seeping out from every unsealed corner of what is apparently a picture-book existence. Read full review

As for Madchen Amick, a stunning beauty with an edgy intelligence, Kazan has given her a role that grows more interesting as it deepens. Read full review

Kazan's writing in Dream Lover is spare and evocative, but here in his first film he also makes a case for himself as a talented director. It's hard ever to feel safe during Dream Love'; even during stretches when nothing bad happens you just know something will. Individual moments may be clear, yet everything in the film has an uneasy ambiguity hanging over it. Characters seem to connect, but they don't quite. [5 May 1994, p.E4]

Kazan's dislocating strategies carry Dream Lover past a few stumblings and credibility lapses, ushering us into Ray's debilitating alienation, imprisoning us with Spader in Ray's projection of his fantasies onto a woman he realizes he knows nothing about. "Dream Lover" is a thriller that demonizes women more cleverly and slickly than most. [20 May 1994, p.52]

Possibly the greatest anti-date video ever...Writer-director Nicholas Kazan was obviously too enamored of his final twist to clean up all the loose ends and red herrings, but the acting has enough verve to put this sour valentine over but good. Read full review

Kazan does have his father's fierce erotic curiosity, that sense that once you unravel a story's real lusts and greeds, you've solved it. Read full review

Dream Lover is a classic example of a movie setting up its viewers. Half the fun lies in recognizing that at the end. Artsy dream interludes and some rather silly dialogue mar the production, but these things fade into near-obscurity in the face of the climax. Dream Lover will never be considered a classic, nor even a particularly memorable example of its genre, but that won't stop those who watch it from enjoying themselves -- even if that means playing into writer/director Nicholas Kazan's hands. Read full review

Dream Lover ends with a devious last-minute twist that will delight some and infuriate others into cries of "Is that all there is?" But the surprise ending fits the rest of Dream Lover perfectly, a movie that wholeheartedly embraces its genre's cliches -- yet still keeps you riveted. [20 May 1994, p.5]

An overly abstract mystery about the difficulty of really knowing another person, "Dream Lover" is too rarefied for a popular thriller and too hokey for an art film. Directorial debut of notable screenwriter Nicholas Kazan displays more of an awareness of film's visual possibilities than a flair for them, and while there are any number of interesting ideas bouncing around here, pic falls between stools both artistically and commercially. Read full review

Vague and unsastisfying, but not as immediately dismissable as Propaganda's 1993 shocker dud "Kalifornia," "Dream Lover" has going for it the lure of Spader and Amick going for broke and a plot that will bring on post-screening discussions. Either masterfully restrained or badly out of whack, depending on how one interprets the conclusion, "Dream Lover" is problematic enough to earn only passing notice in the marketplace. [11 Apr 1994]

Neither Spader nor Amick can get past the generic nature of the characters they're playing, nor can they make up for Kazan's timid approach to their supposedly steamy love scenes. The nude Spader is so carefully draped and arranged that he could be posing for a soft-core parody, while Amick resorts to doing an impersonation of a haughty 1940s glamour queen. [6 May 1994, p.D31]

Dull thriller which isn't very thrilling. Read full review

Kazan’s technique drafts seductive promises that the empty-headed Dream Lover can’t keep. Read full review