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 The Dreamers Production NotesLeft alone in Paris whilst their parents are on holiday, Isabelle (Green) and her brother Theo (Garrel) invite Matthew (Pitt), a young American student, to stay at their apartment. Here they make their own rules as they experiment with their emotions and sexuality while playing a series of increasingly demanding mind games.
Set against the turbulent political backdrop of France in the spring of 1968 when the voice of youth was reverberating around Europe, "The Dreamers" is a story of self-discovery as the three students test each other to see just how far they will go.
The Dreamers was helmed by Bernardo Bertolucci, whose film The Last Emperor swept the 1987 Academy Awards garnering nine Oscars including Best Director and Best Picture. It marks his third film shot in Paris, following The Conformists and the Oscar-nominated Last Tango in Paris. The screenplay, adapted for the screen from his original novel, is by English author and film critic Gilbert Adair.
The Dreamers strikes a personal chord for both Bertolucci and Adair, for although their paths never crossed, they were both living in Paris at the end of the 60s, experiencing the events against which the film is set.
Their love of cinema took them to the birthplace of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), immersing them in a strong international cinema culture. “There was something magic in the 60s,” Bertolucci recalls, “in that we were … well, let’s use the word ‘dreaming’. We were fusing cinema, politics, music, jazz, rock ‘n roll, sex, philosophy.”
The film stars Michael Pitt, recently seen in the award-winning Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and with Sandra Bullock in Murder by Numbers, Eva Green in her feature film debut, and Louis Garrel, who previously appeared in Yolande Zauberman’s La Guerre in Paris.
Movie Review
Passion for cinema carries lusty 'Dreamers'
"The Dreamers'' is very much a young man's movie, which is strange since the man who made it is 63. But Bernardo Bertolucci's films have been getting more impassioned and adolescent with the years. ``The Conformist'' and ``Last Tango in Paris'' now look like works of towering maturity next to the empty stateliness of ``The Last Emperor'' and ``Little Buddha,'' while those films are light-years removed from the panting teen-boy crush on Liv Tyler that is ``Stealing Beauty.''
``The Dreamers'' isn't that bad - actually, it's funny, affecting, interestingly twisted, and seriously erotic before it heads south in the final stretch. It's also the first major studio release to hit theaters with an NC-17 rating in seven years, but if the eroticism here is more provocative and explicit than, say, a passing glimpse of Janet Jackson's right breast, it's also more recognizably human. In ``The Dreamers,'' sex is what's on everyone's minds when they talk about politics, art, and movies.
Especially movies. Adapted by Gilbert Adair from his 1988 novel, ``The Holy Innocents,'' ``The Dreamers'' is a coming-of-age tale for a generation that grew up intoxicated by the visions streaming off revival-house movie screens. It's set in 1968 Paris and begins at the fabled Cinematheque Francaise, where Matthew (Michael Pitt), a callow young American student, sits up front at every show so he can get the rush faster.
Matthew's in the streets, too, after Henri Langlois, the shambling head of the Cinematheque, is ousted by Minister of Culture Andre Malraux - only in 1968 France would riots break out over old movies - and in the tumult he meets the dark, brooding Theo (Louis Garrel) and Theo's ravishingly lovely sister Isabelle (Eva Green). Eva is wearing a red beret and has chained herself to the gates of the Cinematheque, and if there's a headier image of the hot-wired allure of cinema, revolution, and sex that was a certain corner of the 1960s, I've never seen it.
Theo and Isabelle take Matthew home to their parents' book-lined warren of an apartment. The American moves in; the parents leave for a holiday; the sexual tension and movie references grow and tangle together like kudzu. Outside, the events of May '68 fill the streets while Hendrix and Joplin pound like Furies on the soundtrack. Inside, the trivia contests lead to kinkier variants of Truth or Dare. This is a film where failing to identify Marlene Dietrich in ``Blonde Venus'' has unexpected consequences.
The sex scenes in ``Dreamers'' are luminous and charged with the electricity of young people playing rainy-day games while their parents are out. Yet they never truly lead anywhere, and that's part of Bertolucci's point. Matthew, Theo, and Isabelle slowly run out of money and food, but they're too busy indolently shagging and arguing over Chaplin and Keaton to care. The movie's a paean to the infantilism of the revolution - a portrait of a generation drifting out to sea.
Where another director might be critical of such gorgeous children, Bertolucci indulges them. He loves the hothouse air in the apartment, the casual nudity, the weird humor of some of the sex. He also loves the characters for their youth, but it's the youth of the actors that let him down. Pitt has the passive hunkiness of a male model or a hustler in a Warhol movie; the script hints at his depths but shies from any real evidence. Green goes more out of focus the less she wears: With her clothes off, she's just a beautiful young woman naked, but with her clothes on she has the carnal impact of an electromagnetic pulse.
The more genuine love object in ``The Dreamers'' is cinema itself. Clips from Hollywood and French classics punctuate the film - ``Shock Corridor,'' ``Breathless,'' ``City Lights, '' ``Top Hat, '' ``Freaks,'' Godard's ``Bande Áa Part,'' Bresson's ``Mouchette'' - and when Isabelle moves slowly about her bedroom memorizing the furniture, neither Matthew nor acolytes in the audience need to be told that she's imitating Garbo in ``Queen Christina.''
Bertolucci doesn't cite ``Les Enfants Terribles,'' the 1950 collaboration between director Jean-Pierre Melville and playwright Jean Cocteau, but he doesn't have to. ``The Dreamers'' is in many ways a remake of that feverish classic of emotional incest, only with more overt politics and far less danger. The film's final minutes return Matthew, Theo, and Isabelle to the streets for a glib, unconvincing wrap-up, but clearly the director's heart and hormones are back in that mossy apartment, and you can feel the opportunity for something grander, sharper, and wiser slip away. Bertolucci has crafted a film so nostalgic for the blindness of young lust that it ends up blinding itself. - By Ty Burr
Movie Review 2
In the Parisian Spring of 1968, protest and and political unrest was in the air. The same was true in many parts of the world at that time, but Paris was very much the center of change... politically, culturally, artistically and sexually. Bernardo Bertolucci vividly recreates this time and place in his latest film, an erotic, sensual and hedonistic dream immersed in the heart of this revolution. 'The Dreamers' is a gorgeous film about three idealistic young students who while away the hours and days in their vast Parisian apartment talking about love and sex, war and politics, morality and films. And just outside their windows the world is changing.
Matthew (Michael Pitt) is quiet, bordering on shy. He is a polite and unassuming nineteen year-old American studying in Paris who spends most of his time at the Cinémathèque Française, which was the center of artistic passion at the time. The devoted patrons of the cinémathèque were cinephiles of the highest order and were utterly devoted to their favorite films and directors. He makes friends with Théo and Isabelle, "some real Parisians" as he tells his Mother on the phone. Théo (Louis Garrel) is an elegant rebel who feels passionately about almost everything. He doesn't get along with his father but still accepts monthly checks from him to support himself. His twin sister Isabelle (Eva Green) is a romantic idealist and an intellectual, overflowing with cinematic drama, as when she mimics Greta Garbo in 'Queen Christina'.
The three of them stimulate and inspire one another. Théo broods about everything and challenges Matthew on various topics. They get into heated debates about Chaplin versus Keaton, Clapton versus Hendrix, and war versus pacifism. Matthew is a pacifist who truly believes his mind is more powerful than his fists. He is more accepting of turmoil than Théo, who feels a more urgent need to be noticed and heard.
Isabelle is a sensualist... Wanting to touch, taste and feel everything she can, sometimes all at once. Her sensual inhibitions lead her and her brother into very unusual territory. They sleep in the same bed every night. They kiss each other softly, the way lovers do. It is as if they've known only each other before they met Matthew. And they are oblivious to the oddity of the nature of their relationship.
In one early scene, we discover that Isabelle and Théo challenge each other in a little cinematic trivia game where one has to pay the "forfeit" if the answer is not provided. When Théo misses a question, Isabelle makes him masturbate in front of her and Matthew. A while later, they involve Matthew in their games, and when he is unable to deliver the correct response, they order him to make love to Isabelle. Their group dynamic is fascinating, if somewhat bizarre.
To some degree, these three characters are living in a dream world while holed up in their apartment. But the inevitable intrusion of the outside turmoil always lingers. And in one scene, late in the film, that intrusion is a shocking wake-up call to both them and us. And in a very real way, that outside turmoil saves their lives. The reality of their situation overpowers the romanticism and they are forced to grow up and confront the real issues of the world.
At first, one suspects that these three friends will face the world together. However, it is the differences between Matthew and Théo that lead to the destruction of their threesome. And it is only then that we see Isabelle's loyalty was never really in question at all.
Perhaps it all sounds rather cryptic. But that is the nature of Bertolucci's work... Maybe that is true of all great directors. There are always layers peeling away to reveal new layers.
Bertolucci's direction is masterful. He is able to tell a very basic story of three friends being sexually playful and intertwine it with questions of morality and political intrigue. He weaves in some lovely references to classic films, some overt and some very subtle. There is a lovely scene where the three of them race through The Louvre in exactly the same way as was done in Jean-Luc Godard's 'Bande à part'. He intercuts his film with footage from Godard's classic. He does the same when Isabelle mimics Garbo. He also gives subtle nods to 'The Third Man', 'Breathless', 'Mouchette' and 'Blonde Venus'. I also love the inclusion of footage from Chaplin's 'City Lights' as they debate Chaplin and Keaton.
There is one truly magnificent scene in 'The Dreamers' that I must make special note of. Our three main characters are all squeezed into a bathtub, soaking away, as they debate the merits of war versus the consequences of going to jail for desertion. As their debate fizzles, Bertolucci uses a tri-fold mirror to capture all three faces in a way that would be logistically impossible otherwise. Many directors have used mirrors to great effect throughout the history of filmmaking, but this was brilliantly original. The scene continues as they all doze off into a lazy deep sleep.
The performances are delicate and finely tuned. Michael Pitt, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Leonardo di Caprio, balances his role carefully between wide-eyed naiveté and intellectual pretension. In essence, he plays the blank slate for the two engines of the story, Theo and Isabelle. It is a breakthrough role that will hopefully lead to more great choices. Louis Garrel delivers a nice turn but seems to be overshadowed a little. The screenplay never really requires him to break out of his shell. Perhaps his role is slightly underwritten.
The standout is Eva Green. She announces herself as a new star with this brave role. It is a brilliant performance that requires her to bear more than just her naked body for the bulk of the running time. One gets the feeling she was rubbed emotionally raw by this film. Her character is the type who feels deeper, loves deeper and hurts deeper than the others. If she chooses, Eva Green will be a huge star over the next decade or two.
This glorious film is definitely intended for cinephiles. It is for all those who are often labeled pretentious by the hoards of average moviegoers who only seem to describe movies in two ways, 'kicks ass' or 'sucks'. 'The Dreamers' is intellectually stimulating, artistically intriguing, politically relevant, sexually charged and subtly profound. I recommend it strictly for those who already know the way to the local art-house theatre without having to look up directions on the internet.
Unfortunately, this type of film doesn't merit must-see viewing for most moviegoers anymore. But it is the type of film that would have had ticket lines around the block in the streets of Paris in 1968. Times have changed and more people are eager to see 'Matrix' sequels these days. It's kind of sad really. But there are still a few million of us in this world who are eager for this more weighty material. It's just that we aren't as likely to run into someone else who is willing to discuss it with us.
'The Dreamers' is not a film designed strictly for entertainment, although there is a lot of fun to be had. More than anything though, it leaves me steeped in thought about so many things and it has me wistful and nostalgic for a time when this type of film was more the talk-of-town than the latest CGI action-fest or teen-queen high-school fairytale. 'The Dreamers' represents real cinema. -- TC Candler
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Louis Garrel, Eva Green and Michael Pitt in The Dreamers.