Dream Boy or the Pursuit of Being
2019 · 14m · USA
Directed by Auden Bui
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
A middle-aged actor with dwarfism, worn down by a stalled career and a barren personal life, finds a desperate path to seize control of his own destiny. What starts as a grimy character study takes a sharp turn into darker territory in its closing moments.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 70s character study that baits you into empathy before yanking the moral ground out—Bui refuses the redemption arc everyone expects and leaves you asking whether we even deserved to like this guy in the first place. The fact that it uses Jordan Prentice's actual marginalization as a *premise* rather than pathos is the kind of subversive move that makes other programmers squirm, which means it's probably essential.
Bui's formal restraint in the first act—the muted palette, the studied blocking—draws clear lineage to the character studies of Cassavetes and the New Hollywood malaise tradition, but the genre rupture in the final minutes reads as tonal miscalculation rather than earned thematic complication. The craft is considered, yet the film seems uncertain whether it's a portrait or a warning.
The entire film hinges on Prentice's refusal to perform likability in scenes where a lesser actor would lean into vulnerability, and that single choice—the deadness in his eyes during moments meant to break him—is what transforms a familiar story of stalled ambition into something genuinely unsettling. It's a performance decision that does the work of the entire third act.
Reviews
A grimy, dark, 70s-invoking short with a compelling lead performance — I'd happily watch a feature.
Works primarily as a character drama about a struggling performer, with darker elements emerging only in the final moments.
Festivals
- NewFilmmakers Los Angeles 2019