The Dreamers (2003) - Bernardo Bertolucci
Related: 2003 in film - eroticism in mainstream film - Bernardo Bertolucci - Italian cinema
The Dreamers (2003) - Bernardo Bertolucci [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Dreamers is a 2003 English/French drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The film is based on Gilbert Adair's novel The Holy Innocents. Adair also wrote the screenplay for the film. [Aug 2006]
Description
A young American exchange student, Matthew, (Michael Pitt) has gone to Paris, France in order to study French. Through his love of cinema, he comes into a rapid friendship with a French woman, Isabelle, (Eva Green) and her brother, Theo (Louis Garrel). All 3 have a severe love for movies, especially "the classics". As their friendship grows, Pitt learns of the extreme intimateness shared by the siblings and gets pulled into their world. Over time he falls in love with them and the three of them seclude themselves from the world falling further and further from the reality of the 1968 student riots. An abrupt ending to this relationship comes when that world is shattered and they are compelled to face the reality of 1968 France.
This movie earned its MPAA NC-17 rating for explicit sexual content bordering on what many have called pornography or voyeurism. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreamers [Oct 2004]
Amazon review
A love letter to movies (and the French new wave of the 1960s in particular), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers starts with a 1968 riot outside of a Parisian movie palace then burrows into an insular love triangle. Matthew (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), an expatriate American student, bonds with a twin brother and sister, Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel), over their mutual love of film--they not only quote lines of dialogue, they act out small bits and challenge each other to name the cinematic source. Matthew suspects the twins of incest, but that doesn't stop him from falling into his own intimacies with Isabelle. As the threesome becomes threatened, Paris succumbs to student riots. The Dreamers aspires to be kinky, but the results are more decorative than decadent; nonetheless, the movie's lively energy recalls the careless and vital exuberance of Godard and Truffaut. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
References to other films
- Bande à part
- Shock Corridor
- City Lights
- Paisà
- They Live by Night
- Johnny Guitar
- A Star Is Born
- Rebel Without a Cause
- Touch of Evil
- Les Quatre cents coups
- Pierrot le fou
- Persona
- La Chinoise
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- The Cameraman
- Freaks
- Scarface
- Blonde Venus
- Queen Christina
- Top Hat
- The Girl Can't Help It
- À bout de souffle
- Mouchette
Quotes on the Cinématèque Française
"Only the French would house a cinema inside a palace," observes Matthew, a twenty-year-old American movie buff hanging out in Paris in 1968. He's speaking, of course, of Henri Langlois' Cinématèque Française, the national film archive which was a center of activity for directors of the French New Wave. Matthew (Michael Pitt) is in the thick of things when demonstrators take to the streets to protest Langlois' ouster by the Minister of Culture, André Malraux. And, in the weeks that follow, those demonstrations expand to a broader battle between the students of Paris and the French government as a result of which the government was forced to make concessions--including the reinstatement of Langlois. --http://www.culturevulture.net/Movies8/Dreamers.htm [Oct 2004]
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