Dream Of Life

While the reviews of this film labeled it pretentious, I found it to walk the line gracefully, if dangerously, on just this side of inventive.

What saves it is its clear, if inexplicable commitment to collaboration. Patti Smith narrates, performs, and interacts with the faceless, mysterious filmmaker/friend? Steven Sebring. Thus when it veers to the absurdly avant-garde or unnecessarily existential we must give this all to Patti, who certainly has earned this right.

An experimental biography of a living artist like none I’ve seen, the artful filmmaking bounces about in time, identifies no one, gives little biography or background but loads of philosphy in an esoteric style well matched, it seems, to Smith’s dreams, muses and poems. The film makes the feeling of her.

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