Then in the next dream, after waking up to go pee, I had one which somehow led to me thinking about The Dead Poets Society, a film I have actually never seen - and my ever-helpful subconscious decided there was no time like the present to watch it.
The opening scene showed a group of college/High school students waiting in a hallway, along with a teacher or two. I think they were waiting to embark on a field trip of some kind - pretty sure there was narration but I can't remember what it was saying.
The boy on the right was a somewhat scruffy, class clown-ish seeming individual, and apparently one member of the arriving party was his girlfriend.
He shuffled to one side of the narrow hallway (which incidentally seemed a lot like just the front of some normal house, possibly based on my Dad's house) and hid partially from the sight of his teacher amongst some umbrellas hanging there, then commenced to making faces and gesturing silently to her in greeting as the other party approached.
It wasn't entirely silent, however - his increasingly exuberant attempts to convey his adoration through the means of facial expression, gesture and possibly interpretive dance soon caused the umbrellas he was hiding in to start rustling noticeably. His teacher, who looked to be a rather stern fellow (or at least rather grumpy in this scene) cast a dour glance over there, quickly ascertained the cause of the noise and dragged the lad out of there.
Pretty sure the scene ended about there.
After that bit of an intro the movie introduced the two main characters, a man and a woman of similar age, both of whom were either high-level college/university students or some kind of teachers/lecturers.
It seemingly sort of veered off the rails and became some kind of romantic comedy, although I've never seen the real movie so what would I know?
Anyway, these two colleagues, as the narrator explained, had an almost supernatural psychic link going on. Pretty sure there is at least one better, more correct term for the phenomenon, but they were basically on an emotional see-saw - whenever misfortune befell one, the other would be lucky; if one was dismayed the other would be elated.
I can't remember for sure if they had to actually learn of each other's fortunes for this to take effect, or if it truly
was supernatural.
Either way, the film gave several examples, with increasing comedic value. They hadn't actually seen each other for some time, but the effect had continued.
Or maybe it only happened/was more noticeable when they were apart? I dunno. They had some weird love-hate relationship in person, too. It ended with him departing on some research-related overseas trip to some tropical island (I'm guessing she was displeased about that success/adventure), then with her rejoicing to hear the news that the cargo of rare fish that his research vessel was carrying had escaped during the journey.
However, when she learned (or possibly sensed via some weird psychic link) that he had, in fact, been happy about the fish escaping - indeed, he was overjoyed that they had gained freedom, not upset by the potential setbacks to his research - that turnaround distressed her so much that the scene ended with her acquiring a large number of bottled beers (not sure what brand, they looked more like snapple but they were definitely alcoholic), getting blackout drunk drowning her sorrows, and next thing she (or at least I, the viewer) knew, she'd caught a last-minute flight to the island to catch up to him.
I think she'd apparently had the option to attend the research expedition as well, being a member of the same university or whatever, but had originally decided not to - near the end of the dream she explained to him (they seemed surprisingly friendly in person and were chatting casually on the beach) that she didn't generally like to meet college people since she was both "a feminist and a vege[tarian]", as though those things were really niche and objectionable... who knows, perhaps they were in the time and place where the 'film' s as set.
After that, the dream ended with her breaking the fourth wall and taking over narrator duties, speaking directly to the viewer as she expressed an unexpected optimism for her stay on the island, as well as mentioning that she and him had been lovers at some point, and perhaps still were on-and-off, but hadn't done so in a long time.