Nacho Vigalondo’s Daniela Forever

Nicolas makes sleeping his grief away a proactive strategy, rather than a form of denial. That’s because it is lucid dreaming, pharmaceutically boosted. Regardless, he reunites with his late girlfriend, who is exactly as he wants to remember her, until maybe she starts to get a little bit real in Nacho Vigalondo’s Daniela Forever, which releases today on DVD and BluRay.

Nicolas and Daniela were perfect together. At least that is how he remembers them as a couple, so her freak accidental death sends him spiraling downward. He gets so bad, his platonic friend Victoria arranges for him to join the test group taking her big pharma company’s lucid dreaming drug. She knows it works, because it helped her manage her post-divorce depression. However, the experimental controls are so lax, Nicolas accidentally starts dreaming of Daniela on the first night—and he keeps going back to her, filing fake progress reports for the scientists.

Initially, the dream world is his oyster. Daniela is just the way he remembered her, but when he’d prefer her slightly different, he simply instructs her to forget inconvenient memories. Their world is only limited by his past experiences, so the borders are a bit blurry and indistinct. However, the more time he lucid dreams of Daniela, the more their dream world expands and fills in. It might actually be turning somewhat, kind of real. That’s not my interpretation. Nicolas dreams that Victoria suggests that very possibility.

Vigalondo is incapable of making of boring films, but this isn’t among his best work. The early scenes are rather confusing, but he down-shifts into interesting territory when Nicolas starts to question the supposed unreality of his dream world. However, it loses steam when it morphs into a pseudo-feminist critique of the Twilight Zone episode “A World of his Own,” guest-starring Keenan Wynn, as an author who can change reality by simply recording into his Dictaphone. To make matters worse, the conclusion is a murky letdown.

Still the underlying concept, in which dream becomes reality and perhaps vice versa is quite provocative. Individually, Henry Golding and Aura Garrido are very good as Nicolas and Daniela, but their chemistry together is questionable. However, Nathalie Poza’s smart, forceful portrayal of Victoria often steadies the ship.

Nobody bats a perfect thousand, not even Ohtani. Fans of Vigalondo will appreciate the intriguing moments, but he has better films to introduce himself to newcomers, like Timecrimes and Colossal. Still, Daniela Forever holds a unique distinction. It is probably the only film of the year thus far that prominently features a drug company that is not engaged in villainous and/or illegal activities. In this case, its just slightly clueless. Earning a mild recommendation for its intriguing speculation and lack of cheap anti-corporate bias, Daniela Forever releases today (10/21) on DVD and BluRay.