While hard-pressed to describe Call for Dreams (2018) a wholly successful film, I did kind of enjoy this weird, visually engaging piece. Set in a perpetually rainy Tokyo, it follows the inexplicable career of a woman named Eko (Mami Shimazaki), who takes out a vague ad in a local newspaper requesting people call in to describe their dreams. Occasionally, if her interest is piqued, she ventures out into the night to help bring those dreams to life. Among the people who call her: an Israeli police detective (Yehezkel Lazarov), who may be leveraging her to investigate a murder. Or is he?
Nothing about the plot of Call for Dreams makes much sense. It’s experimental cinema that feels heavily influenced by the work of David Lynch. But Lynch’s work generally coheres into some sort of discernible artistic message, and I’m not sure this one does. Even so, it does have a confident visual style, a certain surrealistic moxie. Snippets of its random, reality-versus-fantasy dialogue deliver thought-provoking undertones. Wide appeal it may lack, but this one effectively fills an eclectic niche.
