Shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio and mostly filmed in black and white, Fugitive Dreams is a nightmare-logic journey across an almost apocalyptic Midwest part of America. Touching on the people discarded by society, it deals with addiction and mental illness and homelessness by focusing on a pair of characters who, for whatever reason, desperately need each other to carry on. It’s a lot to take in.

We’re introduced to Mary (April Matthis) as she picks up a shard of glass in a dead cornfield. Continuing on her journey, she walks down a lonely stretch of a road, passing a sign that simply reads “City Limits.” She pauses and looks around at the desolate landscape where no city sits and finds herself at one of those old timey gas stations, with the restrooms ‘round back. In the restroom, she fingers the shard and is about to use it on her wrist when the restroom door bangs open and John (Robbie Tann) bursts in, desperately needing the restroom and not realizing he’s entering the women’s. Inadvertently saving Mary’s life, John ends up aimlessly following her back down the desolate roads, chattering about a time he told people he was from France and asking her where she's from and where she’s headed.

The two are instantly at odds with each other. John possesses a childlike wonder about the world, envisioning some magical place where the “pits of the world” come together all at once. A place where Arabian horses are parked next to German cars and where Italian ships rest on the hills of Montana. His visions are bold and when he does dream, it’s presented in color as a harsh dichotomy to the dreary and harsh reality of the black black and white, semi-apocalyptic waking world. Mary, meanwhile, is more of a pragmatist. She was probably once idealistic, but the world has beaten her down and she has the literal scars to prove it. One early heart-wrenching scene of the two of them on a train racing to nowhere and everywhere ends with Mary finally telling John her name and John asking if he can touch her scars. As we focus on Mary’s face while he traces them, it’s obviously the first time Mary’s been touched in a kind way in a very long time.

Characters flit in and out of the duo’s journey, bringing with them their own mysterious pasts and potential relationships to the characters. A man named Israfel (Scott Shepherd) and his non-verbal mother Providence (O-Lan Jones) hop on the train, for instance, and instigate trouble between Mary and John. Israfel keeps potentially mistaking John for someone named John Aiken and the insinuation continues to thread its way in John’s head. And while John seems almost childlike in his demeanor, when he sees Mary sitting near Israfel, pangs of jealousy race through his face.

Directed by Jason Neulander from a script he wrote with Caridad Svich (who wrote the play the film is based on), Fugitive Dreams isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s a very artistic and lyrical exploration of guilt and resentment and trauma that focuses on two people who’ve been deemed unimportant by society. Dialogue heavy and operating on nightmare logic through a good portion of the film, the narrative requires patience and focus. What is exactly going on in Fugitive Dreams is probably best left up to the viewer to decide as it thrives on ambiguity and secret pasts.

Take John, for instance, whose dreams are mostly in color. Instead of being a welcome reprieve from the dreary real world, they’re in fact nightmarish. His stepbrother Steve, flexing a belt and twisting it between his two meaty hands telling John, “Go sleep, John,” for example. Or a forest encounter with a French Canadian man named Henri Gatien (David Patrick Kelly) who stokes John’s inner demons to violence with the promise of money and the hint of food. His journey is in stark contrast to Mary, who may view the world through her own version of traumatic history, but sees it for what it really is. While John talks about his love of Drive-Ins and the magic of cinema, she humorously shuts him down by saying, “I don’t like the idea of 20’ people walking around.”

Fugitive Dreams feels at once of his world and outside it. An almost purgatorial nightmare that’s inescapable for two people who’ve been cast out of society. Of course, hints pop up along the way such as an intriguing visit to a grocery store that looks simultaneously out in the middle of nowhere and in the center of a bustling town. But for all of its melancholic fantasy, it’s anchored by a breathtaking performance by April Matthis as Mary. She wears quiet desperation on her face and for all of her annoyance at John’s immature and kidlike behavior, it’s obvious she needs him just as much as he needs her. It’s this story, bereft of the weird, artsy craft surrounding it, that pulled me in and kept me watching...even as I grew more confused with what the story was trying to say.

It won’t be for everyone but there is a propulsive beat and an human truth to Fugitive Dreams that I found haunting and enchanting.