A Dream of Passion

A film set in Greece. Maya is a well-known actor. She has come back to her country after many years and is playing in an ancient tragedy at a theatre; her part is the woman who kills her children. The producers hit on an idea for publicity: there is a woman in prison for a similar crime, the actor should visit her and the press should see it. Maya agrees. The woman in prison is Brenda. She is American; she lived in Greece, her husband left her, and she killed her three children. She has closed herself inside a religious understanding and shows no remorse. From there the film is about two women meeting. What began as a performance continues; Maya keeps going back, and the relationship moves outside the publicity. What the narrative is interested in is not the crime but representation: whether the pain an actor performs on stage is the same thing as pain that was lived. The film asks that directly and gives no comfortable answer. The stage sections and the prison sections cross over; in some scenes which woman is speaking is deliberately left unclear. Melina Mercouri plays Maya and Ellen Burstyn plays Brenda. Andréas Voutsinas is in the cast. Jules Dassin directed; it is one of the films he made with Mercouri, to whom he was married. Who it is for: anyone who likes the meeting point of theatre and cinema and films built on acting. Who it is not for: anyone the subject would weigh on; the death of children is at the centre and the film does not soften it.