"Epstein's quirky, quietly radical film shows consciousnesses being raised right on camera, as Dee Dee learns that "my man had a lot of wet dreams, to a lot of false images". A riveting examination of how retouching has enforced an utterly unrealizable standard of female beauty, even at street level."
Kate Stables
THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

"Revealing, sensitive, and yes, funny, WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES is a wonderful deconstruction of the construction of desire. I strongly recommend it as a teaching tool for academic as well as community environments."
Stephen Duncombe, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies
New York University

“In a barbershop in Brooklyn, Dee-Dee admiringly looks at his collection of celebrity women, tacked up on the wall, in all their smooth, silky glory. In his opinion, these are women who are absolutely perfect. They’ve got no flaws, and there’s nothing about them that can be construed as such. In essence, they are goddesses.
That’s, of course, until director Jesse Epstein comes along. There’s no intention to break this guy’s love for these women, but just to show him how these women actually become what they are. And so begins an absorbing twelve minutes, where we not only hear from Dee-Dee, as well as other barbers, but also a computer airbrush and touch-up artist, where they reveal how they do what they do. As one of Dee-Dee’s co-workers puts it, “He’s been having wet dreams to false images.” It’s a brief documentary that brings new light to exactly how sex sells when it comes to photography, and how real women out there might also be dreaming to false images when they go on this diet and that diet to get the bodies that those women seemingly possess. “Wet Dreams” keeps it all honest and while it may not have the power to stop people from buying magazines out there like Maxim, that’s not its purpose. Its purpose is to educate on a matter like this and that has been accomplished exceedingly well.
Film Threat
Rory L. Aronsky
4 and 1/2 Stars