DREAMLINK | Omeleto

A family reconnects. Jesse and her mother, Beth, aren't getting along. Beth is often too busy making content as an influencer, irritated with her daughter's entreaties for some kind of attention or attempts to help. Jesse often feels like an afterthought as a result. Feeling neglected, Beth retreats to her DreamLink app, where she takes on an avatar form while sleeping and hangs out with another avatar in a fantastical dreamspace that promises to connect her to the person she needs most. With her DreamLink bestie, they have both fun and soul-searching conversations. But even with the solace of virtual reality, Jesse feels a crushing loneliness in her life -- but also finds an unexpected remedy. Directed by Kalani Gacon and written by Kalani Gacon, Helena Zadro-Jones and Class of Mountain of Youth 2023, this ethereal and imaginative sci-fi short is both an exploration of how technology, emotional needs and reality intersect and a poignant, melancholic snapshot of a fraying mother-daughter relationship that has lost its footing. Both strands of the narrative are united by a gentleness in emotional tenor and a searching quality in tone, making for a heartfelt viewing experience marked by tenderness, warmth and non-judgmental understanding. Though it opens with two young women silently enjoying a beautiful landscape together, the heart of the narrative is the troubled relationship between Jesse and her mother, Beth. Beth is consumed with her online persona as a wellness influencer, constantly creating content. Jesse often feels neglected as a result, seeking solace in the mindscapes of her DreamLink app. While the family's real life is visually dark, muted, and drab, DreamLink is full of fantastical sights, beautiful environments and wonderful get-togethers, and as Jesse notes while in her avatar form, she often can't wait to get to sleep, if only because her real life is so emotionally barren and painful. Real life is being forgotten by her mother at a game or practice, or feeling ignored in favor of the stream of notifications on her mother's phone. In DreamLink, she is seen and understood. As Jesse, actor Chloe Engels offers a heartbreakingly poignant performance, ably conveying the toll of neglect as she shrinks in each scene with her mother, played by actor Ebony Nave. Nave has a tricky part, playing a self-absorbed mother whose online persona is partly a cause of the hollowness of her life and partly a defense mechanism against her inadequacies. With most of the emotional development focused on Jesse, Beth is opaque emotionally to us and to herself. And yet she slowly comes to realize the fact of her emotional neglect of her daughter and what it is costing them both. Through one final revelation, the mother and daughter find some way back to one another, bringing DREAMLINK to a quiet yet gently life-affirming conclusion fitting for a film that explores the boundaries between real and virtual lives. It observes how the pain in real life feeds our attachment to the virtual one, and yet it does not solve the problem in and of itself. But when it becomes a tool for understanding and compassion, it makes a bridge between the real and virtual, and allows a mother and daughter to tentatively bridge the gap between them with understanding, acceptance and finally love. DREAMLINK. Courtesy of Kalani Gacon at https://kalanigacon.com.