The Dreamers | Review

Film examines the inspiration of its filmmaker and the cause and effect relationship found at Cinematheque Francaise.

One of post-neorealism’s favorite auteurs backlogs into familiar territory,–vacant apartments, extracurricular activities in the nude and the always inspiring City of Lights as a playground for intellcutal foreplay, but despite his erotically charged side dish of flesh and the examples of inspirations derived from the spirit of the Nouvelle Vague film movement, this composition never truly grips onto the dynamic that marked this period.

While director Bernardo Bertolucci certainly gets points for trying to exhibit how film has this left an impression on him as a filmmaker and how a series of events did change a course for some people back in the summer of 68, it simply alludes to the chaos found in the streets and within the in-door dwellings. The Dreamers is more about the thematic exploration of the “learning process” as found in the moments where he incarnates cinema history, where he discusses the spirit of the period or when tries to titillate with a “what kind of kinky act will these kids do next” type of eroticism.

Based on a script by novelist Gilbert Adair, this gives us a Paris that inspires plenty of critical intellectual thinking and red wine drinking and cinema ingesting—and, quite literally in the middle of it all is an American in Paris played by Michael Pitt from Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame. His new friends are a pair of playful and incestual pair of brother and sister twins in a relationship which will offend most non-Bertolucci conformists. Pitt inaptly narrates his adventures (or misadventures) in a postcard syntax, and the camera supplies evidence of the personal carnage with the confines of a dish-filled, empty wine bottle littered apartment of mind games and a Napolitano ménage-a-trois. Newcomer Eva Green channels the sort of charismatic energy that was missing from Liv Tyler’s performance in Bertolucci’s sexual awakening Stealing Beauty, here, Green’s character manifests this in a sort of revolutionary carriage with an underlying vulnerability, aided by the lack of clothes and lack of rules.

For film buffs, Bertolucci offers plenty on the dessert menu as far as cinema history is concerned, in several sequences he transfers, by the use of film clips, a series of film moments-its perhaps the more enjoyable aspect of the film to see these three young misfits try and beat out a record for distance running in the Louvre as seen inside Bande a Part or to have a piece of Tod Browning’s Freaks juicing up a conversation, however, I’ll never view Marlene Dietrich in the light again. The referenced stock news footage never really deepens our sense of the rebellion or revolutionary happenings but rather disconnects from the romanticism that is aspired for. The moving camera aesthetics of Fabio Cianchetti whose opening shot of the Eiffel tower and caged moving elevator shots brings about a phallic effect is scrumptious as in one scene in a kitchen where these odd forfeit games are taken to a new level of a voyeuristic level. The subtle “thumbs up” of the film comes with a film soundtrack that doesn’t feel like a film soundtrack,–Joplin and co. seem well inserted into the design of the space of post-adolescent walls of Mao material and Antonioni posters.

Where the bigger problem lies is on how he conveys this love affair with an époque and while we come to understand that this time period certainly had an affect on Bertolucci and his own principles of filmmaking- the last glance of the film with reversal order film credits and a revision of his filmography prove this, it’s a semi-audacious effort that doesn’t transfer especially well in capturing the mood. It doesn’t help either when the main characters stay in doors all the time. The Dreamers is a lot more conventional film for European audiences, despite so many artifact elements of proof and the librating performances from the young adults, it ultimately lacks the vigor and authenticity.

Rating 2.5 stars