Torino,1969. The pastoral childhood of nine-year-old Massimo is shattered with the mysterious death of his mother. Thirty years later, Massimo is a successful journalist at La Stampa. He decides to sell his parents’ apartment filled with painful memories. Elisa, the doctor who treated Massimo’s panic disorder he developed during the Siege of Sarajevo, feels sympathy for Massimo, lost in mental shock. She helps him to open up and face the scars of childhood. In brief, Sweet Dreams is about overcoming the childhood experience of a mother’s death. But what makes this simple theme so dear is the child’s universe created by the Italian master, where melancholy and horror coexist so harmoniously. It is a sphere represented by the devil Belphegor, an unrealistic feagure that is interpellated by Massimo’s imagination in order to hide from the truth and protect himself. In this regard, the dark shadow cast on both Massimo as a boy and as an adult appears as a desperate psychological struggle. This new cinephilic work of Marco Bellochio is full of homage to classic horror films like Cat People and Nosferatu. (RHEE Souewon)