The dreamers movie review- Dedicated to cinema

Youth and longing, a voyage of discovery. 

Director: Benardo Bertolucci

Writer: Gilbert Adair

Cinematographer: Fabio Cianchetti

Cast: Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Michael Pitt 

Year: 2003

In the spring of 1968, three students carrying their own views on sex, cinema and politics collided through a protest started by students over the ouster of Henri Langlois. Passions erupt into street fights, barricaded streets, police brutality and handmade firebombs. Three students find their lives intertwined by their shared love of film and cinema. Matthew (Michael Pitt) is a nervous American exchange student with an extensive knowledge of obscure cinema, which intrigues and entices the twins, Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). Matthew becomes fascinated by the sense of intimacy the twins share. When the twin's overly bohemian parents go away to travel for a month, Matthew stays at their colourful apartment, and the three of them lose themselves in a fantasy.  

To be enjoyed completely in its fullest form, The dreamers pretensions have to be indulged, working with an elegant and extremely raw screenplay from Gilbert Adair, an adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel 'The Holy Innocents'. The dreamers play with the question, "Is sex dirty?" to which the only real answer is "only if you do it right."  Bertolucci plasters his nostalgic love letter to the Paris of 1968 all over the silver screen, where movies were consumed at its legendary Cinematheque, Francaise, with a sort of nuance and extremely passionate and sexy modus operandi. 

I really wanted to like this movie. 

I've tried, but after watching it over and over again, it leaves me with the same taste of dissatisfaction the watch before gave me. Bertolucci is an outstanding director with a beautiful and colourful visual style that keeps you glued to the screen. I'm not saying The dreamers wasn't visually stunning because it is. It is masterfully detailed, with intricate and personal scenes which make you envious of the crazed youth he depicts on screen. The dreamers isn't about the politics of cinema, or the naivety of youth like you are first made to believe it is about. It's about sex. I've come to realise that Bertolucci likes to explore a loss of innocence through youth. Matthew loses his innocence to the children of cinema through uncomfortably intimate and graphic sex scenes. Soon an overly passionate and indulgent three-way romance is underway, with a large volume of homoeroticism and incestuous intensity. It's a raw movie about intimacy and identity, yet these beautiful moments are ruined by elongated lovemaking scenes, full-frontal and full-throttle scenes that you feel you shouldn't be watching. I don't know if it was Bertolucci's intention to make his viewer either uncomfortable or uneasy, but I feel these overly graphic scenes just take away everything from the rest of the movie. The dreamers is a reflection of new wave french cinema, and I do believe the Italian director was taking inspiration from those overly explicit films to create his own. It's a homage to cinema, to the french and their films. Bertolucci celebrates abstract and famous french directors and movies throughout. Bertolucci sets the scenes, putting us in the 60s, the era of liberation and sex. The dreamers know what it's doing, it knows what it's talking about, and I applaud Bertolucci's execution on screen. In the end, I believe that the message Bertolucci wants us to take away with us is that life is not a movie. Even if we try so hard to emulate them, re-creating scenes and living in a fantasy world, forgetting about reality, life always catches back up to us. It's impossible to live life like a movie. We cannot write an ending we have yet to experience. 

The dreamers looks exquisite, yet it feels a little out of sorts. The three central performances are played with great intensity, and it almost feels too real until you're snapped out of your focus due to full-frontal nudity or awkward political arguments or the constant pop-culture references that throw you off course. The extremity of youth and the un-self-conscious lassitude of Paris is presented wonderfully on the screen. Watching this film feels like an emotional roller coaster, throwing you in different directions at every turn. I really wish I could like this film more, but there's just something that dissatisfies me each time I've finished watching, creating a rush of boredom that flows over me, drawing me back to my phone. I do really love its originality, and Bertolucci's direction is always at perfection; it just feels like something isn't right. It's extremely pleasurable at points, yet at others, I feel as if the movie will never end. The ending may be one reason I feel a little frustrated with this movie. Yet if I do take a step back, Bertolucci is commenting on how 'nothing lasts forever', and that all  'good things must come to an end'. 

But still, I'm a little unsure; it feels distant, almost detached from the connection it needs between the viewer and the screen. There's something in the way stopping me from really loving this movie. 

Review: 2.5/5

Favourite quotes: 

“In this big, epic movie - everyone is an extra.”

“It makes films like crimes, and directors like criminals”

“Listen to me, Theo. Before you can change the world you must realise that you, yourself, are part of it. You can't stand outside looking in.”

"A petition is a poem, a poem is a petition."