Dream Lover

Dream Lover is a 1993 American erotic thriller film written and directed by Nicholas Kazan and starring James Spader and Mädchen Amick, with Bess Armstrong, Frederic Lehne, and Larry Miller in supporting roles. The original music score was composed by Christopher Young. Plot Ray Reardon, a successful architect, divorces his wife, and goes to a gallery opening to meet a woman. While there, he bumps into a woman, making her spill wine on herself, and she verbally abuses him. A week later, he runs into the woman, 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. An assistant for one of his clients went to Swarthmore College one year before Lena but, while the assistant remembers the university president dying of a heart attack while giving a university wide talk, Lena has no recollection of the president, thinking he was another student. A woman meets the couple at a restaurant but Lena says the woman has confused her for a woman named "Sissy" from Piru, Texas. A few years later, Ray visits Piru, Texas and is told by a town resident that a picture of Lena shown by Ray is Sissy, nickname for Thelma. He visits the family home and meets Lena's parents, who recognize him and know his name. He finds out that alleged beatings of Lena as a child by her mother did not happen (admitted by Lena) and that Lena told her parents Ray was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. Ray becomes increasingly paranoid when his wife sports 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.