Awaking from a Dream

• 2008
• 1 Hr 34 Mins
• Drama

A door opens. It is a door to a dream. We walk through a long and narrow corridor leading to several rooms. We see a young girl, a prisoner of war and a woman who is collecting water from a well by a small house near a beach. Suddenly, rain starts to fall. We enter the well, as raindrops fill a bucket. Raindrops become water from a leak. This takes us to a stormy landscape. Thunder roars as a window opens. The person having the dream wakes up. PASCUAL is a seventy-year-old man who lives in a small town in Spain. He owns an old house and a little store. He earns just enough to live. He can't get used to being old and lonely. To him this is rather difficult because he has not seen his daughter for years and he misses his wife, who died short after her daughter left home. A Jazz band plays in a brasserie in the city of Marseille. The owner, ALINE, is a Spanish thirty year old woman, who is divorced and has a son. All day her only thought revolves around her relationship with the singer of the band, BRUNO. BRUNO considers ALINE just another lover in another pub in another city. While the band is playing, MARCEL -ALINE's son- arrives. He is five years old and is eager for his mother's attention and tenderness, but all he ever gets are screams and disregard. The little boy hides in a small corner behind the bar counter to play and enjoy his dreams happily. There is a fire at the brasserie, so ALINE is forced to leave Marseille, but she does not know what to do with her life. The singer wants to start a new life in Berlin. He gives ALINE his address, and before leaving he says; "I only want to play and have a problem-free relationship". ALINE and MARCEL travel to Spain. When ALINE sees the old house and the little store where she grew up, she remembers her childhood and feels a deep pain recalling her mother. When ALINE meets her father, she lies to him about the time MARCEL is supposed to be staying with him: "It's just till I get settled". PASCUAL agrees without a reproach. S I N O P S I S At the beginning, MARCEL feels frightened because his grandfather is an unknown to him. PASCUAL seems trustworthy and smiles, and eventually a special atmosphere arises between both of them. PASCUAL's loneliness and sorrow disappear. Now he only lives for his grandchild's happiness. MARCEL finds in PASCUAL more than just a best friend -a person who takes care of him, listens to him, plays with him and wakes up love in his young heart. MARCEL's curiosity lead him to search for PASCUAL's hidden memories. The boy discovers a box full of pictures of the Spanish Civil War, his grandmother and the beach. All these things will remain in MARCEL's sub consciousness. The child is afraid of losing this world. Every day when he comes back from school, his grandfather is sleeping in his bedroom. There he rests every single day. The price: his grandfather is alive. He looks for PASCUAL's breath, with his mouth open. His grandfather and MARCEL breathe at the same time. It is not just air what he breaths in, it is his grandfather's dream. MARCEL wakes up, now he is eighteen. He works at the store every morning. Hardly nobody ever buys anything there. A banker makes an offer to buy the building. In the evenings he works as a waiter in a restaurant. Loneliness returns to PASCUAL's life. For his grandchild what they experience together is not enough and all his relatives and friends have disappeared. PASCUAL notices that something strange is happening to himself -his memory begins to fail. He is embarrassed and therefore does not tell MARCEL. The relation between PASCUAL and MARCEL becomes shattered. PASCUAL gets worse: he suffers paranoia, wets himself, forgets everything and often gets lost. Finally, MARCEL takes his grandfather to the doctor. He is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. MARCEL realizes he is losing his grandfather. Now PASCUAL's struggle for survival becomes more difficult than ever. MARCEL and his grandfather get on well again, and are very close now. The tenderness they feel for each other emerges again. MARCEL and PASCUAL see each other for the last time. In a dreamlike world, grandchild and grandfather say goodbye to each other in a beach. In this universe everything makes sense and appears like a childhood dream. After the funeral, MARCEL, sad, angry and totally lost and confused, leaves Spain and travels to Berlin looking for his mother. All ALINE's reasons for moving to Berlin have vanished quickly. Lonely, she goes on looking for something, but she is an alcoholic. MARCEL arrives at his mother's door and he finds her in a pathetic condition. For a few days, he follows her, but he hides his identity. MARCEL knocks on ALINE's door with a bottle of vodka is pleased to see someone. ALINE treats him like a lover. MARCEL does not care about his mother not recognizing him. He only wants to sleep one last night by her side. The next morning, he writes a note on a picture, puts it under the pillow and leaves the house. He returns to his Spanish town. When he arrives at the store it is rundown almost completely. He enters the store carrying gasoline in his hand, closes all doors and windows and lies on his grandfather's bed. While the house and store are on fire we hear ALINE reading her son's letter. The door to the dream opens again and MARCEL starts through the corridor where his mother and grandmother are. The latter shows him to a big room at the end of the corridor. His grandmother disappears into a big glow. Afterwards MARCEL trespasses the glow, as well. A sea appears where his grandparents are. His grandmother is wearing a red dress. She nears him. MARCEL joins them. A few moments later he meets with his mother. MARCEL wakes up abruptly and runs for his life away from the fire. Leaned on the store counter he sees his childhood disappear as in a dream. Thunder roars and it starts raining over the ashes.