The Dreamers

Bernardo Bertolucci has been shocking audiences since 1962. It didn’t take much back then. Hell, even in 1972 all it took was Marlon Brando and a stick of butter. These days it’s hard to shock the average moviegoer. It’s even harder to shock a film buff like myself. But the boy’s still trying with The Dreamers, the first NC-17 film to be released since maybe Crash back in 1996.

Bertolucci is up to his old tricks again mixing sex and politics in an effort to bring a little spiciness into the cinema. Does he succeed? Well, almost.

Matthew (Michael Pitt from Bully–but he looks a lot more like Leo DiCaprio here than he did in that movie) is an American kid in Paris in 1968. He’s a complete innocent just trying to go to school and find himself. And he’s a HUGE movie fan. He goes to the Cinematheque Francais every day to catch the latest film that owner Henri Langlois is running that night. The guy would run anything he found that was in good enough condition to go through his projectors. Unfortunately, he was also a revolutionary. He hated the cops and didn’t care who knew it. When they finally shut him down all Hell broke loose.

At the first protest of the closing of the Cinematheque Matthew meets Isabelle and Theo (Eva Green and Louis Garrel), a couple of beautiful French kids who seem to be lovers, but are actually twins. As Matthew gets to know them he realizes just how fucked up their relationship really is. Not before he gets involved, though, and starts having lots of sex with Isabelle.

Isabelle and Theo act like they are just as revolutionary as Langlois, but they’re really too afraid to do anything outside their own home. So they do what they can: they sleep together. But even with that they can’t go the distance. And they’re such big movie fans that everything they do is from a movie. Bertolucci points this out by showing us the scenes that they’re imitating occasionally. They’re so bored with their own lives that they want to become a movie.

This is a pretty good movie, but it’s nowhere near Bertolucci’s older films. The story is interesting, but it doesn’t seem to add up to very much. The characters are alright, but the only one I really feel anything for is Matthew. He’s just caught up in the fucked up storm of Isabelle and Theo.

On the plus side, the color and cinematography is pretty amazing. The dialogue is not bad even with all of the quoting from other movies. And, yes, there’s lots and LOTS of nudity. The three main characters spend a good part of the last half of the film naked. And you see all of everybody. We’re talkin’ lips. (And it really helps that Eva is hot as hell.)

The main problem I have with the movie is that it really seems to start dragging after a while. It’s nearly two hours long, but it seems like about three. No matter how interesting these characters are, I didn’t want to spend THAT much time with them. And I never saw the end coming. At no point did I ever think, “Ok. We’re about to wrap things up.” It always felt like it could have gone on for another three hours.

That’s not really a compliment.

When the end finally did come it worked pretty well, which is always good.

I hope a lot of people go to see this movie. It may not be the best thing out there, but it is entertaining and it would really show the studio execs that NC-17 films can make money. We are adults and can make up our own minds about what we want to see.