"Dream On" or how to invisibilize the Guadeloupean gaze

“We chose a woman rather than a sorcerer to give a more modern vision, a free interpretation for an international dimension,” replied Christopher Bordelais and Jordan Laurent when asked about their choice to use a female character to embody the dangerous connection to the invisible world. This was after the screening of their film “Dream On,” selected for the KIFF (Kreyòl International Film Festival) third edition on September 26th, 2025. Their explanation about this female character echoed the synopsis I had read.

Kane, a young Guadeloupean man with a passion for music, struggles to make ends meet, neglecting life's priorities. He ends up losing his job and finds himself in a desperate financial situation. His life takes a radical turn when he meets a mysterious young woman in a bar. This encounter turns his life upside down, opening the doors to success, but at what cost?

Beyond the issue of the lack of female representation (I'm so used to it now that I literally have zero expectations), “Dream On” brought back memories of those first few confusing months when I decided to explore Caribbean cinema in 2016. I had fallen in love with films such as “Soup a Pyé” [review], “Rico” [review], and “Ô Madiana” [review], but I couldn't put into words what made these productions from Guadeloupe and/or Martinique so special to me. With the discourse around “West Indian cinema” being generally negative, I had no frame of reference to understand how these films were original and represented universality. Even the rare compliments, such as those for Euzhan Palcy (or Maryse Condé in literature or Kassav' in music), rang hollow because there was no strict, rigorous analysis of the fiction they created. Until now, the interpretation of our cultural works has focused on their political significance, their historical dimension, their economic weight... But what about discussions of the system of representation? I had to turn to the English-speaking Caribbean to understand that I liked films like Alain Bidard's so much because they represented our gentleness and sensitivity while remaining rooted in our contemporary reality. I have been living in this Karukerament system of representation for almost ten years now, so it is unsettling to be confronted with a work like “Dream On,” which illustrates this internal struggle between the intention to represent Guadeloupe far from clichés and the fear of imposing a Guadeloupean perspective on universal subjects.

The intention to represent an authentic Guadeloupe

No postcard images of Guadeloupe with its idyllic beaches or cliffs overlooking the ocean. No rural Guadeloupe with fields stretching as far as the eye can see under the watchful eye of La Soufrière in the background. “Dream On” puts Lapwent (Pointe-à-Pitre) in the spotlight. When Kane leaves his apartment, he walks around without giving the impression of trying to show “the real, typical West Indian way of life.” In this urban jungle, he finds a space to breathe, to connect with himself. It's an invitation to look around and find the beauty of nature hidden beneath human transformations.

Between the extremes of a Guadeloupe where there are only ghettos and a Guadeloupe stuck in the past, “Dream On” strikes the right balance in portraying a modern 21st-century Guadeloupe. From the buildings in the neighborhood that house his dreams of glory to the “luxury” hotel complex where he enjoys that glory, Kane moves in a realistic space without falling into miserabilism. It is a facet of Guadeloupe that also exists but remains under-exploited in favor of the aesthetics of “hood films” or documentaries with an exoticizing gaze.

Whether in the story or in the characters' words reflecting a system of multiple beliefs, the connection between the visible and invisible worlds is the premise of magical realism in our Caribbean system of representation. In “Dream On,” Kane is on the brink of disaster when his greatest dream is handed to him on a silver platter by a succubus. The seductive woman myth transcends cultures, religions, and eras, so the character's existence is understandable without further explanation. The succubus fits into the dramaturgy of “Dream On” without resorting to comedy or, at least, special effects that are exaggerated in comparison to the rest of the film.

Similarly, Creole is used in dialogues to express the characters' feelings. While it is the language of anger and violence in Kane's daily life, it is also the language of his angst. Indeed, the songs he performs are exclusively in Creole, starting with “Lésé Mwen,” the track that propelled him to the top of the charts. While discussions on how to promote Guadeloupean/Martinican artists nationally and even internationally have been regularly animating social media for the past two years, “Dream On” is based on the idea that a song exclusively in Guadeloupean Creole can be successful on the global stage.

Through these elements, the intention to tell a story set in contemporary Guadeloupe, where Guadeloupean identity is not the subject, is clear. Kane is “a young Guadeloupean man” and is not there to explain to the world what it means to be Guadeloupean... Nevertheless, in its eagerness to universalize the message so that “everyone” can relate to it, “Dream On” loses some of its realism and even originality in aspects that should have supported the promised depth in the first twenty minutes.

The difficulty of promoting a Guadeloupean perspective

“Dream On” was accepted as it was by Canal+ [it’s the equivalent of HBO in France]. According to the co-writers/directors, no rewrites or changes were requested, which is indeed rare. My theory is that the person in charge of the project is one of those many “experts” in the audiovisual industry who judge our productions solely through their colonial filter. “Dream On” does not threaten the colonial filter and even gives the illusion of detaching itself from it, and yet...

“People don't know what goes on behind the scenes in the music world, and that's what we wanted to show”... In a nutshell, that's how Christopher Bordelais and Jordan Laurent described the film. Without even mentioning American films, French cinema has already explored the idea of the hopeful young artist who burns their wings in the music world with “Bouge!” (1997), “Dans Tes Rêves” (2005), “Qu'Allah Bénisse la France” (2014), and season 1 of “Validé” series (2020). Music as a profession in 2025 is all about entrepreneurship. Yes, it's difficult, but there are still some basic things that Kane doesn't do, which prevented me from suspending my disbelief enough to stay locked in. After the contract signing scene, I already knew how it was going to end, and there were no surprises.

We know that the story takes place in Guadeloupe, but apart from the WISH series sign, there are no visual details to identify it. We are therefore left with the impression that the “West Indian islands” are interchangeable, even though we have specific urban structures that can help to immediately characterize Guadeloupe, just as the Golden Gate Bridge does for San Francisco, the Empire State Building does for New York, and the Eiffel Tower does for Paris.

The succubus appears in several cultures. LaDyablès is probably the character in Caribbean folklore that most closely resembles it, so why not openly offer a modern interpretation instead of sticking to neutral nameless imagery? Similarly, the French subtitles for the Creole phrases sometimes diminish their symbolic significance. I know that there is no such thing as a perfect translation and that sticking to a literal translation can hinder overall understanding. Nevertheless, there is one sentence that stood out to me. The one that Kane utters and which triggers his downfall. “An té vann manman mwen” was translated as “I will give my soul”... The image in Creole of selling one's mother, as in the French expression “vendre père et mère” (to sell one's father and mother), is all the more powerful in our post-slavery context, but the chosen translation remains neutral in its interpretation. So, was Creole that effective in conveying the emotion of the moment? Moreover, why isn't it also used in interactions with women, when Patrick Saint-Eloi and Gilles Floro have sung to us of a love sublimated by Creole? In any case, I applaud the fact that Kane was not involved in the world of illegality like Marcus in “Get Rich or Die Trying” or Djay in “Hustle & Flow.” However, the ordinary man who wants to become an artist needs even more backstory, like Jimmy had in “8 Mile”. And that's what I think is missing in this film. Showing his passion for music in grounding moments of his everyday life.

Kane embodies the naivety of artists from the 1990s who were crushed by the system. The first sequence sums up what he wants: to be adored. The film clumsily attempts to deconstruct this illusion by recounting his rise and fall without reflecting the current conditions of the music industry. Some may doubt the realism of the set up: a Guadeloupean artist who explodes onto the global scene thanks to social media. Recent years have shown us that this is entirely possible. On the other hand, what is unrealistic is to think that a rock artist from Guadeloupe is unique, when the artistic direction of the Ausgang band, led by rapper Casey and with Sonny Troupé on drums, has been exploring this fusion of rap and rock since 2019. Moreover, we have generations of musicians who have been accompanying artists in all musical genres for decades. As a reminder, Jean-Claude Naimro was Peter Gabriel's pianist in the 1990s. Ludovic Louis was Lenny Kravitz's trumpet player in the 2010s. Jean-Philippe Fanfant was Louis Bertignac's drummer. Our dancehall and zouk artists do live rock arrangements, and who's complaining? If there are no Guadeloupean artists who position themselves as rock singer, it's a matter of branding and storytelling rather than a “the Caribbean audience ain’t open-minded enough” matter. That's another debate.

While defending his Creole rap/rock, Kane represents a backward-looking mindset where artists are content to create without thinking about their branding, storytelling, marketing, or media training... He is the kind of artist who absolutely wants to put himself under someone else's control because he doesn't dare take charge of his own career. Was this a choice of representation? Probably, but the lack of character development makes Kane a flat character, even though the first half hour of the film sets up everything needed to make him multidimensional.

Where does his passion for music come from? Where do his addictions come from? Why does he torture himself so much to create if his only goal is to be in the spotlight? If his only goal is to be in the spotlight, why isn't he more proactive in promoting his music? Why doesn't he have family members in Guadeloupe? Where are his parents? Why does he find it difficult to assert himself in front of other men? Why doesn't he have any friends? The colonial filter prevents us from offering answers or even clues to build logical answers... Alexia de Saint-John, the creator of KIFF, asked them if their real-life friendship inspired them to write about male friendship. They laughed but replied that it was “spontaneous, without our real-life friendship inspiring us in particular”...

The question was legitimate, given that this is a film in which the female roles are completely underdeveloped, but they did not express any intention behind this decision. If they had deliberately focused on male friendships, that would have been a real marketing argument. The real originality of the film wasn’t in telling the story of a rap/rock singer who sells his soul for success. It was in showing this reserved, solitary singer, prone to addiction, evolving in an exclusively male world where he must figure out who wants to help him and who wants to hurt him. I challenge you to name even two films depicting men who care for each other without ulterior motives, without betrayal, without physical attraction, and without creating bonds by leading depraved lives. This is what the film could have explored through the character played by Stanley Durimel... In any case, this is the third time this year that I have heard filmmakers express surprise at the depth that the audience gives to their characters on themes that are nevertheless widely covered in the media, such as mental health, Black masculinities, etc. And my Karukerament hypothesis for the absence of such perspective is the influence of the colonial filter in these filmmakers' system of representation. Whereas men like Coco (from “Coco La Fleur, Candidate”), Robert (from “Ô Madiana”), little José (from “Sugar Cane Alley”) and Isidore (from Siméon) try to change their destiny by any means available, the colonial filter favors fatalism and finds entertainment watching the fall of “the idle young Guadeloupean man.” This portrayal of depravation is sometimes even, I find, infantilizing to men...  But I am not a man. I will never understand what it means to be a man. It’s up to them to define the male characters worthy of admiration and empathy. It’s up to them to define the balance between sensitivity and passivity, between intensity and ease, between complexity and mediocrity. It’s up to them to have standards.

The description of Kane in the synopsis is literally what the film depicts, without ever going beyond the young man struggling to get by. Who is Kane Davidson? Hearing this full English name in a Guadeloupean context, one is entitled to wonder. Does he have a parent who immigrated from Saint Lucia or Dominica? Is he himself an immigrant who arrived in Guadeloupe as a child? Is this an important detail for the story? Yes, when you’re aware of the xenophobia in Guadeloupe and the discrimination suffered by non-French people. Showing Kane trying to sell his music and being rejected or accepted because of his origins would have given his character more texture without detracting from his passivity in humiliating interactions. Since there are no scenes showing that he has family in Guadeloupe, these are the questions that made sense to me. His sister lives in mainland France, so we understand that he himself lived there without knowing why he was there or why he came back... Unless the name was simply to make it more international.

in conclusion…

Ultimately, “Dream On” aims to portray the loner artist battling his demons... except that we know nothing about those demons. The film follows the expected conventions of the musical film genre without reinterpreting them from a Guadeloupean perspective. I was hoping to find the entertainment value of “No Soca No Life” [podcast episode] or at least the storytelling à la “8 Mile.” Christopher Bordelais and Jordan Laurent said that the film is so layered that you need to watch it several times to understand the different levels of interpretation. For once, I was the target audience, but I'm willing to admit that I missed the point.