Set during the Great Depression, Eugene lives with his mother (Better Call Saul’s Kerry Condon) and father (Vikings’ Travis Fimmel) and his young sister on a rural farm. The family are struggling with their crops having been decimated by dry weather and the sandstorms of the Texas dust bowl.

With a well-realised sense of place and time, Dreamland sees Eugene frustrated at the poverty of not just his family but the community as a whole which is exacerbated when his best friend confesses that he and his family are off to find a better life in California.

But excitement soon enters Eugene’s world as, after word of a bank robbery in town, he subsequently discovers an injured woman in the family’s barn hiding from the authorities. And Robbie’s perpetrator, bloodied from gunshots, convinces Eugene to assist her in dressing her wounds and convincing him to provide sustenance and a hiding place. 

Unsure if she’s manipulating the teen for her own ends or genuinely falling for his kind demeanour, Dreamland creates a space for their strange relationship to develop. And this ends up being the core, and the key, to the film.

Both actors bring believable performances and with her usual sultriness, Robbie is fantastic as the duplicitous damsel. Cole is her equal and is tormented by the frustrations of his first love affair and the fear of being duped into a trap.

Bonnie and Clyde is an obvious parallel to be drawn with its 30s-era couple of the run narrative, but there’s also a visual similarity with the more recent Lawless (2012) and its dusty prohibition intensity. Far less violent than the latter, the film however does captures powerful passions of the affair. It also contrasts the wide-open plains against the secretive hiding places of farm buildings, oppressive bedrooms and sleazy hotels. 

An impressive single take sequence in a hotel bathroom is the film’s technical highlight and the two leads are incredibly watchable in their well-written roles. And kudos to Darby Camp as the young Phoebe Evans who looks up to her brother with tender love.

Although not spectacularly inventive, the film’s broad canvas does sometimes err towards dullness, the optimism of a better life – be it away from the family, community or the past itself gives Dreamland an underlying theme that satisfies throughout. 

And in the end, the sparseness of the wilderness and the closeness of the intimate relationship are balanced well as we follow a couple escaping their personal nightmares in the hope of finding a land of idealistic dreams. 

★★★½