CinemaSerf

0/10

It's Paris in the springtime, in 1968, and the students are revolting. "Matthew" (Michael Pitt) is visiting from the USA and he encounters the siblings "Theo" (Louis Garrel) and "Isabelle" (Eva Green) with whom he shares a fascination with movies. They invite him to their home for dinner just as their parents are heading off on trip. It's clear to the visitor that these two have a curiously intimate relationship. Not incestuous, but not a kick in the shirt off it. What now ensues sees "Matthew" ensnared in their games that have basically few holds barred - an orgy of the body and the mind fuelled by curiosity, lust and fine red wines. There is something quite unique about the way in which Bertolucci uses sex (and there's plenty of nudity and sex here) as a tool to explore the character of these three young - and beautiful - people, probing their limits and their ideals in a provocative fashion. Until the very end, I'm not sure the ongoing civil disobedience has much to do with this, indeed I thought maybe that was a way of trying to add some intellectual gravitas to a narrative that is often thinly contrived and consists largely of what would have to be described as soft-porn. It's shocking at times, but the characters are completely undercooked with Garell, especially, having little to do except gradually come to resent the burgeoning sexual relationship developing between his sister and the stranger. It's not a good film, but it is a brave film and may well mark the end of the application of Victorian attitudes and mores to 21st century cinema.

cutecruel

0/10

I wish I never watched this movie, I cannot express in words how much I hate it. I don’t know who needs to hear this but this isn’t the edgy, progressive film you think it is. This felt far too much like the sex fantasy of any male film student. It’s like Bertolucci didn’t want to make porn, so he tried to make it pseudo intellectual. You know the director is male by the fact that Eva Green is naked 90% of the time, and Bertolucci got rid of the gay content that was originally present in the novel that this movie is based on, had it been lesbian, I’m sure he would have filled the movie with lots of lesbian scenes. I'm sure the intentions of the original novel, _The Holy Innocents_, are far more sophisticated than … well, sex scenes between three young, attractive people. Because _The Dreamers_ is just a long and overdrawn porno, using a social revolution as a backdrop, so that the movie should be important. The three characters think they are communists leading the revolution from the comfort of their big Parisian apartment. They have only one personality trait - pretentiousness - boo hoo look at us, we're 3 rich kids who have sex, spend our parents’ money on wine and cigarettes (SO unique, you see), read poetry and using film quotes to try to proof themselves as philosophical, mysterious, and superior to other people (_‘film people are just so special and different’_). _The Dreamers_ is the kind of film that one day a dude will mansplain to you how you're too stupid to understand how deep it is.