The Dreamers
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s latest movie is a strange mesh of sex, film history and politics, set in France in the late ’60s around the time of the student uprising. It is there we meet Matthew, an American who has travelled to France to study, but who instead spends most of his time at the Cinémathèque. He meets Isabelle and her Siamese twin brother, Theo, separated now quite nicely, thankyou. He moves in with them and when their parents leave for a few weeks; they get up to all kinds of mischief that includes masturbation, Greta Garbo, arguments over politics and whether Keaton is better than Chaplin, camping in their living room and lots, and lots, of sex.
The film is not primarily about the politics that provoked the riots — rejection of the Vietnam War and affiliation with left-wing causes such as communism and anarchism — although it acts as a background to the lead characters’ bizarre little world. Much of their unrest seems instead to stem from a simple need of freedom of artistic and sexual expression. It is in this world of New Wave films and sex games that the three characters lose themselves, until the real world comes hurtling back (literally) near the end.
The leads are brought together by their love of movies and there are frequent references to everything from City Lights and Top Hat to Breathless. These references are really a treat and end up being one of the most interesting aspects of the movie. Then there’s the sex, which is frequent and quite explicit (it was rated NC-17 in America). The sexual games the three of them get up to (often initiated by one failing to answer a movie trivia question correctly) border the line between the fun and the perverse.
The actors are all pleasant enough, with Louis Garrel as Theo giving the most interesting performance, but given the amount of nudity I’m not sure their acting skills were the highest priority of the casting director (they’re all very good-looking).
It gets a little pretentious on occasion, and it doesn’t reach the profundity it presumes it possesses, but overall this is a good film, and if you get bored, then there’s always the abundance of movie references to keep you amused.
***/4
Josh Blackman
