If Jacques Rivette’s The Beautiful Troublemaker (1991) is an art of time and beauty, The Dreamer is an art of love and dreams. Raphaël, an ugly fat man with only one eye, lives with his mother in a remote manor house after the owner leaves. One night, the heiress Garance comes to visit. As the director mentioned that she took reference from Beauty and the Beast, this film is a variation of a classic in the 21st century. Garance is not as innocent as Belle. The folk music that Raphaël plays alone at night is a world away from the electronic music that Garance, a contemporary artist, enjoys. But the love and pain that the man with a face of a beast holds deep in his heart is timeless. In the role of Raphaël, Raphaël Thiéry portrays the film’s subject. He, who visited the Busan International Film Festival last year with Scarlet (2022), gives the entire movie a sense of weight with his presence. His appearance is reminiscent of the legendary actor Michel Simon. While Simon is a jokester, however, Thiéry is feral and sublime at the same time. (LEE Yong Cheol)