Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Fox Searchlight

When I first heard about Bernardo Bertolucci’s new film The Dreamers, I broke into an excited smile. “You’re telling me,” I spoke to my issue of Premiere magazine, “that there is going to be an NC-17 movie focusing on sexy teenagers in 1968 Paris who are obsessed with movies, sex and politics, in that order. And it’s from the director of Last Tango In Paris? Premiere, if you weren’t inanimate, you could be my valentine.”

When I heard this was coming to three screens of the Harvard Square Theater, my excitement overrode the caution the mostly poor reviews should have given me. Sadly, the experience itself was underwhelming. Although this wasn’t particularly shocking, considering the critical feelings on this flick, it had the possibility of being so much more.

The plot, such as it is, begins with the introduction of Matthew (Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike Michael Pitt) encountering Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel) at the protest of the closing of the French cinematheque, the classic movie theater where those three cinephiles had spent many an afternoon. Soon, Matthew has been invited to stay at Isabelle and Theo’s house while their parents are away and movie inspired sexual games ensue.

One of the more interesting devices Bertolucci uses is intercutting many scenes of the three of them with the movies that inspired the scene, such as the three of them racing through the Louvre attempting to beat the time set in Bande à Part (Band Of Outsiders), or mimicking the classic streetwalk of Jean Seabourg in Breathless. These are obviously devices more geared to movie dorks like myself; if seeing a clip from Shock Corridor,  Samuel Fuller’s 1963 opus, brings a smile of recognition to your lips, there are at least some pleasures in this flick.

But what about the more obvious pleasure, the copious nudity? This is the director of Last Tango, one of the most erotic pictures of the last 40 years. Sadly, this constitutes a different kind of nudity. Rather than being a result of strong sexuality and eroticism, Bertolucci pares the nudity down to its base elements. While all three are bathing naked in the bath, Isabelle has her period. Although her menstrual blood is presumably meant to symbolize the danger in their relationship at that point, the net effect is turning off the audience. It only adds to the uneasiness we already feel from the twins bathing together.

Yes, that’s right, Theo and Isabelle, who are revealed to be twins, bathe and sleep naked together. Although they never seem to engage explicitly in intercourse, their relationship seems to go over the border into quasi-incestuous if not fully incestuous. This is not to say that the movie is not worthwhile. Eva Green, besides being beautiful, is convincing in the conflict between her desire to have a normal relationship with Matthew, her love for her brother and the uncertainty of how to live life away from the movies. Garrel also manages to convince at being unsure of how to live with conflicting feelings of love for his sister, Matthew and confusion at life. Pitt, however, never quite convinces the audience of his superior intellect and inner strength; he seems too confused to react as decisively as he does and too decisive to be as confused as he should be considering the behavior around him. Not to worry ladies, both Garrel and Pitt also offer plenty full-frontal nudity. Almost the entirety of the film’s second half revolves around their games, but it becomes unclear what their points are. Also completely unclear is the significance of the student riots at the conclusion, real historical events. There seems to be mockery of Isabelle and Theo for joining in, but that would mean Bertolucci disliked the characters he worked so hard to give us, without any real explanation of why.

Part of the explanation, I believe, is that their lives fall apart because all they understand is movies, and they are unsure how to live without that stabilizing force. It doesn’t explain enough though. There are many good ideas in this movie, which made me feel it was worthwhile to see it; it is adventurous in a way that few modern films are allowed to be. Sadly, the content doesn’t measure up to the ambition, making the thought of what this could have been all the more disappointing.

—Scoop A. Wasserstein