Taglines: If you think you know your lover. Think again. Especially if she’s your wife.
Dream Lover movie storyline. Ray is young, charming, successful and the owner of a prosperous architect company. However, he has recently gone through a very painful divorce. His friends try to cheer him up by showing him the positive sides of being single but for Ray marriage and stability is just too important.
But when he meets Lena his gloom is quickly forgotten. She is beautiful, sensual, mysterious and he is drawn to her like a moth to a candle. They marry quickly, have their first child and Ray lives in a total bliss. But then strange incidents occur which shed some light on Lena’s background. Ray slowly realizes that he hardly knows anything about her at all. Who has he really married?
Dream Lover is a 1993 American erotic drama film written and directed by Nicholas Kazan and starring James Spader, Mädchen Amick, Fredric Lehne, Bess Armstrong, Larry Miller, Kathleen York, Kate Williamson, William Shockley and Joseph Scoren. The original music score was composed by Christopher Young.
About the Story
The movie opens on divorce proceedings involving Ray Reardon (Spader), a successful architect, and his first wife. Shortly after their divorce, he agrees to go to a gallery opening to meet a woman with whom his obnoxious friend, Norman (Larry Miller), sets him up. While he is there, he embarrasses himself by bumping into a woman (Amick), making her spill wine on herself. She wastes no time verbally abusing him. A week later, he runs into the woman, named Lena Mathers, at the supermarket. She apologizes for her behavior and the two go to dinner. They have sex the next day, marry shortly thereafter, and become parents.
Despite his happiness in the marriage, Ray becomes suspicious after catching Lena in several lies about her past. Over time, Ray becomes increasingly paranoid when his wife begins sporting bruises that she will not explain and begins doing things that indicate she is having an affair. During a tense confrontation, Lena taunts Ray by claiming to have had an affair with an unnamed friend of his and refusing to tell Ray if their children are biologically his.
Ray hits Lena, who then has him arrested and committed to a mental hospital for observation. Despite an attempt to prove that Lena has been lying, the judge finds Ray to be mentally incompetent and orders him held for six months. Shortly after Ray has been committed, Lena privately admits to him that his suspicions about her were correct all along and that she had planned for years to do what she did to get his money.
After Ray convinces one of his friends to tell Lena that she has made a mistake in her “master plan”, Lena shows up at his birthday party to talk to him. Ray lures her away from the attendants who are supposed to be supervising him and tells her that having him declared insane was the “mistake” because he could not be held legally accountable for killing her. He then chokes her to death on the lawn.
Dream Lover (1994)
Directed by: Nicholas Kazan
Starring: James Spader, Mädchen Amick, Fredric Lehne, Bess Armstrong, Larry Miller, Kathleen York, Kate Williamson, William Shockley, Joseph Scoren
Screenplay by: Nicholas Kazan
Production Design by: Richard Hoover
Cinematography by: Jean-Yves Escoffier
Film Editing by: Susan R. Crutcher, Jill Savitt
Costume Design by: Barbara Tfank
Set Decoration by: Brian Kasch
Art Direction by: Bruce Robert Hill
Music by: Christopher Young
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexuality and language.
Distributed by: Gramercy Pictures
Release Date: May 6, 1994
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