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Berlin Review: In Your Dreams!

Having a character named Luky being the parkour at the centre of well-intentioned Czech film In Your Dreams! tells us just about all that we need to know. Because for a film that is a combination of a dream state and a love story, and a story about parkour, for the film to interlock together and work properly, the filmmaker has to be extremely Luky.

Petr Oukropec’s film is incredibly well-shot. The colours pop vividly, and the parkour action reflects quite wonderfully. It’s true that there has rarely been a film that has captured the street art in its true nature. Perhaps only Casino Royale comes immediately to mind, and this was only for a single scene, and was a confrontation between hero and villain. Most of all, the film was not female-centered like this one, starring Barbora Štikarová as the protagonist Laura.

We can imagine that it was difficult to cast actors that could freely partake in the art of parkour, and at the same time also act. But the lead actress does a nice job of being able to balance the two arts. The trouble with In Your Dreams! is that while the parkour segments of the film are generally really fascinating, (and captured extremely well), the dream sequences are slightly less interesting and seem to be slightly derivative of very many movies, (girl likes boy that may or may not be into her and must look within herself to find the answer). Though the climax is handled well, one wonders that if the film had remained singularly focused on the parkour aspect, then the film would have been just that much more breathtaking.

As it is, In Your Dreams! is a memorable ride, and will stick with us when we awake, but may not entirely be the stuff of which dreams are made.

[star v=3]