Review: Nadine Lustre's 'Wildest Dreams'

Image courtesy of Instagram: james

Review by Atty. Ferdinand S. Topacio

WILDEST DREAMS (2020, Careless Music)

Starring: Nadine Lustre, James Reid and Massiah

Directed by: Dominic Bekaert

Executive Producers: Lox Valiente and James Reid

A NOT SO WILD RIDE

Not to be confused with Taylor Swift’s chart-topping song of the same name, wherein the wildly successful American singer-songwriter implores her former lover to remember her “in your wildest dreams”, Nadine’s latest opus is what she calls a “musical album”. Or as her press release claims, “it consists of six music videos that come together as one short film.” That having been said, this author thinks it would not be unfair to treat it as a movie.

Which is a shame. Because taken one by one, the six music videos are above average in production values, and can very well stand on their own. Unfortunately, strung together to create a movie, the work fails to gel into a coherent whole. Instead, it feels like a disjointed phantasmagoria, and what little thematic unity it tries to achieve is quickly lost, diluted in a claptrap of sound and light vainly attempting to simulate high aesthetics.

To be sure, the visuals are nothing less than arresting. It is evident that much effort and expense has been put into ensuring that the costume, props and lighting are no less than excellent. By this work, Nadine, donning carefully-selected clothes and accessories that totally become her, completes her transformation from goody-two-shoes to one of the glamorati. The generous heaping of state-of-the-art visual effects, coupled by the use of enough smoke to double the pollution level of Metro Manila, make for sequences that are dreamy, surrealistic, sometimes even mind-blowing. Paired with Nadine’s elegant stage manners and talent for physical pageantry, the resultant product is admirable.

But then, it is one thing to watch a superb three-minute music video, and another to sit through a thirty-three minute “musical album” with the same visual texture droning on and on. The producer makes an effort to run a common thread though the songs as they segue along, using as his device voice-overs stating certain philosophical thoughts, or Nadine making declarations of being an independent woman. “I give myself permission to trust my vision”, she intones, and proceeds, in short order, to allow herself “to be free”, “to be with other people”, etc. The attempt at profundity falls flat, though, and comes off as pretentious. Even the foray into environmentalism, via a narrated modernized myth of Nature as a “Diwata”, is not visited with much success.

Nor does the music stand out from the rest of other offerings. Nadine’s shift from mainstream pop and dance to a new sound – an amalgamation of chillwave and cloud rap, among others – may be a sign of her artistic growth, but it may alienate a significant chunk of her fan base, to whom such music may well go over their heads. Besides, her reading of the genre is middling at best; the homogenous tonality of all six cuts, sorely lacking in hooks; and the poetry of the lyrics which will sound esoteric to many, will become monotonous quite quickly. What will sustain interest are the visuals, but in the end, as I have said, they too shall begin to grow old: all gloss and glam rather than any meaningful mise en scene.

All told, Wildest Dreams may be Nadine’s dream of breaking from her past as one half of a tweetums love team, a declaration of her independence (from both James and Viva Films?) and the latest stage in her never-ending transmogrification. It may be her fondest dream at the moment, but the outcome is tame and tepid, hardly wild. This is a movie only for the most hardcore fan. In the middle of the film, Nadine paraphrases Blaise Pascal’s “the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” Thus, this review must end with a quote from the early film Annie Oakley (1935, RKO Films), which perfectly summarizes Nadine’s efforts: “Close, Colonel, but no cigar.”