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The Dreamers (NC-17 Edition) Customer Reviews (55 - 57 of 78 Reviews)

A complicated love triangle
"Dreamers" offers sexy scenes and actors, but ultimately everybody is unsatisfied and unhappy, in the trademark French way. The French fascination with brother-sister incest continues. Ambiguity is the name of this game, and nothing gets spelled out--who loves who or how much. If you want a complicated love triangle and a fair amount of nudity, then "Dreamers" fits the bill. Nothing profound here.

vintage bertolucci: erotic, political, personal
Ok, one of the things that interested me in this film was the trailers I saw in Europe: a young nubile female strips, etc etc. But the backdrop - 1968 Paris and its petite revolution - appeared the ideal context for a true film journey. I have long felt ambivalent about Bertolucci: his Last Tango was brutally shocking to me and a high school sweetheart, his Last Emperor appeared to exploit the cheapest "Asiatic mysteries" to me, an American half-Chinese. But there is no doubt about the psychological depth in his unusual and audacious films, which always offer the unexpected.

This film is ironic in the way that many American films would never dare: while student street fighting goes on, some pretentious youths - with conversations sooo like those I had sooo near that time - are creating their own little artistic-erotic world, safe in a cushion of bourgois money that is disturbed only by the strikes of basic services like garbage haulers. I do not know if Bertolucci disdains the little revolution of 1968, but it forms an unspoken reference point to some serious adolescent experimentation. I suspect that they are not studies in contrast for what was going on outside - in retrospect so selfservingly trivial and off-base an effort to re-make society in the space of a week - but a pure metaphor for what it all meant.

The protagonists are middle-class film nuts, who are taken up in the carneval of the 1960s with all its excesses and self-important sillyness. I was similar to them, I admit, but was not in as exotic a place as Paris, though I felt destined to live there for a while (and did in the late 70s, largely for the reasons of the American character). They play film trivia games, which when lost resulted in bizarre "forfaits sexuels" that are extremely titilatting to us folks who like to recall their reckless youth. But it becomes deep as the protagonists get lost in their own personal labyrinthes: the twins obsessed with eachother and with art, the American with the beauty of European difference and quality. Having lived through so much of it, I empathised with all of them and did not find them as ridiculous as many reviewers have: they are just young, experimenting before making tough choices, and enjoying it all while searching for some elusive ideal. Haven't we all passed that way? Or shouldn't we all have?

I will have to watch this many times before arriving at a definitive interpretation, but then that is the way with truly great art. Also, I believe that this film will age well, will be interpreted at many levels as I enter old age. Bertolucci really gets the double-sided nature of lucky youth: they both see more than adults absorbed by a career trajectory and yet their insights can often be callow and pathetically selfish. But hey, that is part of the jurney of life, and this film plumbs a lot of that depth with panache and zest. I loved it.

Warmly recommended.

CINEMATIC ODE TO YOUTH & THE MOVIES.....
Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" is a beautifully photographed, colorful and sensual voyage through a young American's (Michael Pitt) experiences in Paris with an odd brother and sister who befriend him. Set in the late sixties, the backdrop is unrest and student riots in the city. Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel) share a mutual love of film with the initially inhibited Matthew (Pitt) and invite him to stay with them in their parent's house when the folks go away. Immediately, Matthew senses something incestuous between Theo and Isabelle but his infatuation with Isabelle propels him on. They play guessing games about films and have no qualms about nudity and frank sexual horseplay. Matthew (and the viewer) is seduced into their relationship. Many old film clips are featured throughout as they act out and quote favorite lines and scenes from their film sources. The young actors are quite attractive and the sex is explicit. However, I feel much undue hype has been exploited regarding the sexual content and nudity. It's there, it's part of the story---but I found it nowhere near as sensational as I'd read. There are a couple of over-the-top sexual situations (one involving menstrual blood) and the film deserves it's NC-17 rating but to be honest I wasn't as surprised or titillated as I was expecting to be. I found the film to be as much an ode to cinema as well as youthful sexuality. The actors are fine in their roles, the storyline developes plausably and the ending is as expected as it should be. It's a lush, erotic experience and the soundtrack is great with Hendrix, Joplin, etc. evoking sweet memories of a different, exciting era of exploration and change. Certainly not for everyone's taste, but for the non-bashful and adventurous mature viewers it's a challenging and rewarding film.

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