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 I have been an admirer of Bernardo Bertolucci's work for quite some time. I have even reviewed many of his films, "The Grim Reaper", "Last Tango In Paris", "Little Buddha", and "The Conformist". There was a time I was completely under his spell, anything he did just seemed to reach at me and not let go. I don't want to say the Bertolucci of late has been terrible, but his works does not seem as daring as it once was. Say what you will about such films as "Besieged", "Stealing Beauty" & "Little Buddha" but to me they lacked something, here though Bertolucci offers us a glimpse of what was. I'm sure many people will draw comparisons to "Last Tango In Paris" when speaking of this film. In fact Bertolucci himself described it as "First Tango In Paris", but there are those you will agree this movie more than anything reminds us of the "French New Wave" and films by Godard and Truffaut.Jean-Luc Godard once said something along the lines of we say a movie is beautiful because we do not know what else to say. It is the highest compliment we can give it. Well, "The Dreamers" is a beautiful movie. Bertolucci has made a film that celebrates not only his love but our love of cinema. The movie kind of plays off the old cliche ideal lifestyle of the 60s "sex, drugs, and rock n' roll". "The Dreamers" has an American in Paris, played by Michael Pitt who forms a friend ship with Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel) who happen to be brother and sister. This all takes place in 1968 just in time for the "student revolution". Now before I wrote the movie makes us think of the French new wave, we start thinking of Truffaut's "Jules and Jim" and Godard's "Breathless", and speaking of "Breathless" there is a scene were we see Jean Seberg. There are also movie clips featuring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert from "Queen Christina" and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers from "Top Hat". Jean Pierre Leaud even makes a cameo, and maybe some of us are thinking about "400 Blows". There are also intense movie conversations as Theo and Matthew discuss who was funnier Chaplin or Keaton? There is no way I could go into detail and describe what takes place in this movie, all I say is if you remember the old Bertolucci and enjoyed those films, "The Dreamers" will please you. It is the first movie I've seen in 04 and already I can call it a masterpiece. I also want to make a comment on the ridiculous NC-17 rating. First of all when most people hear a movie is rated NC-17 they immediately think it's going to be some trashy porno, this is not true and secondly, there is nothing here that Bertolucci has not done before and his films were rated R. I remember there being male frontal nudity in "The Sheltering Sky", I think there was in "1900", the fact that this movie is rated NC-17 to me has no justification whatsoever! Bottom-line: A movie that brings back the Bertolucci of old. It's more daring then his previous films. This is a movie that is really for film lovers to watch not the casual viewer. A masterpiece.
What I mean is that people have certain norms and styles that they follow based on personal experience and their surrounding culture, so they set up behavior patterns that are acceptable and abide by the rules of those behavior patterns. Ordinarily, one would think that the relationship between Theo and Isabelle is unhealthy and that they are too close. It's not quite incestuous, but what I want to say is that watching this film is like being one of the characters and it forces you to abandon your rules on how to interact with people and makes you see that each situation, each individual that you meet is an original experience and can only be treated on face value. You can't say "well, I'm a boy, so I will not tell another boy that I love him" or "it is not natural for brothers and sisters to be this close and for me to be involved with the both of them, mentally or physically" because in this particular situation for these three people, Matthew, Isabelle and Theo, everything that looked unnatural or wrong on the outside actually was quite natural with them. One must be there to experience what they were feeling to understand, it can't really be communicated with words. I'm sure if Matthew were to tell his American friends about his liason with these to Frenchpeople, it would have no credibility. This film also has an explosive ending. As far as I'm concerned, the ending is perfect, while I was watching, I was hoping that this film would not self-destruct with a cliched ending. I won't give it away, but Mathew's final interaction with Theo and Isabelle grabbed me with its sincerity and its reality, how no good thing seems to ever last. So yeah, there has been no film more important to me in the last year. I can't recommend this film enough to everyone. And one shouldn't be offended by nudity or sex, it's a part of all of our lives. It always has baffled me how people have a problem with sex in film but they're okay with people getting really hurt physically, such as being blown to bits.
I've rarely sat in a movie and been completely jaw-dropped the entire film; rarely have i ever been completely engrossed for hours after; rarely has a movie had such a lasting effect on me... no lie. |
I saw this film when it opened in Minneapolis last week and I sat in the cinema stunned for the whole 2-hour duration of the film. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when I went to see it, I thought it would have a lot of skin being rated NC-17, explore themes of incest and bisexuality and offend a lot of people. This film has all that, but all the more, it shows how we cannot take the rules that we have on our lives and use them for anything.
