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THE DREAMERS Send This Review to a Friend
Despite the sex, specific and implied, the provocative dialogue and the free-wheeling male and female frontal nudity, the most rewarding aspect of Bernardo Bertolucci's latest foray into eroticism and history is his portrayal of passion for cinema as reflected in the Paris of 1968, when intellectuals were aflame over the sacking of Henri Langlois, guardian of the revered Cinémathèque Française, where a generation of French film buffs received their informal education. "The Dreamers" is also filled with New Wave and other film references, clips and ultimately a relationship with the general revolutionary upheaval that filled the streets with protest in the seminal year.
The trouble with the film, however beautifully shot in the haunting manner reflecting Bertolucci's great talent and sure to be a conversation piece, is that the exciting historical aspects become merely the backdrop for the threesome that emerges as the erotic focus of the plot and character study. This would be one thing if the characters didn't become tiresome as the film creeps along and we have gotten over their initial attractiveness as young 20-year-olds seeking to define themselves. "The Dreamers" has a screenplay by Gilbert Adair, based on his novel "The Holy Innocents."
The three youths meet participating in the passion that erupts over the Langlois incident. Michael Pitt, good looking and eager, plays Matthew, a young American seeking to taste the excitement of life in Paris at the time, especially the film fervor that grips so many others. He meets Eva Green as Isabelle, beautiful and mysterious, and her twin brother Theo, smoothly played by Louis Garrel. When the twins invite him to move in with them into the luxurious apartment of their well-heeled parents, he accepts both out of his economic needs and his desire for true friends.
Little does Matthew realize that he is a fly drawn into a spider's web. The twins have been having an incestuous relationship in all but actual sexual fulfillment. Matthew becomes the vehicle through which their urges can find expression. He is drawn into games built around film knowledge with forfeits for the loser. These forfeits involve masturbation and finally Matthew having sex with Isabelle while her brother observes. The activity in the household has resulted in the film being released with an NC-17 rating. Whatever you think about the film, Fox Searchlight Pictures is to be congratulated for refusing to knuckle under to the censorship built into the rating system, which I have opposed from its start, and releasing the film as is rather than cut the scenes to get an R.
Obviously, there is more than enough here to grab our attention, but the youths depicted become rather boring after a while. Once we get to know them, they cease to be as interesting as they were at the outset, and the incestuous feelings between the twins grow more sad than erotic. There is an amusing scene when the parents come home unexpectedly and find the threesome asleep nakedly entangled, and after leaving an allowance check, tiptoe out so as not to disturb them--nice parents who choose not to wake them up and bellow, "What the hell is going on here?" It apparently is a manifestation of 1960s laissez-faire rearing.
One has to commend Bertolucci for his masterly talent. He sure knows how to make a movie. But he can also be boring, too, and one can tire of this threesome by spending too much time with them, their egocentric conversations and their destructive sexual games. A Fox Searchlight Pictures release.
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