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The essential scene in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers
occurs midway through the film, when the three young leads
attempt to beat the time it took the characters from
Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à part to race through the Louvre.
Bertolucci seamlessly intercuts footage from the original
and, in doing so, achieves a beautiful synthesis of life
imitating art. That the famed director fails to sustain such
magic throughout The Dreamers may have less to do with his
shortcomings and more to do with the impossibility of
capturing the spirit of a time (Paris during the 1968 riots,
in this case), regardless of his mastery of the medium.
Besides, Bertolucci is less interested in the protests in the
streets than he is in getting his trio of beautiful young actors
into the sudsy bathtub together. Matthew (Michael Pitt) is a young
American student who is taken in by twin brother and sister Theo
(Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green), while the siblings' parents
are away. The three cinema lovers spend their time quizzing one
another on movie trivia, acting out scenes from particular
favorites, and spending a whole lot of time naked. Bertolucci has
never been one to shy away from sexually frank material, and The
Dreamers certainly delivers on that front.
Fortunately, as with Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci's most sexually
direct work, the director knows how to incorporate full-frontal male
and female nudity in a manner that serves the story without ever
seeming cheap or exploitative. We are, after all, peering into the
private lives of three young adults exploring their sexuality during
the heady days of the late '60s. In Matthew, the twins have found a
kindred spirit willing to go places with them, mentally and
physically, no other companion ever has.
Of
course, Matthew's primary interest is the alluring Isabelle, which
naturally drives a wedge between the two siblings, who are prone to
sleeping naked together. Pitt does excellent work here as a
practical suburban kid from San Diego, abroad for the first time; he
indulges in all Paris has to offer, yet even he can see that the
twins are lost in a fantasy realm that has stunted the emotional
maturity of both. Matthew serves as the liberating factor for the
twins, the dramatic lightning bolt the sunders them apart, forcing
them to examine life as individuals and not simply as two sides of
the same coin.
Regrettably, Bertolucci doesn't explore this aspect as deeply as he
should, choosing instead to bring the turbulent political element of
the time back into play at the end. Not only does this (literally)
shatter the seductively intriguing dream world we've inhabited
throughout most of the film, it shortchanges any real resolution we
might have with these characters (be that tragic or joyous).
Bertolucci is no Costa-Gavras, and the political climate here is
hardly as resonant as 1969's Z. Instead, the Italian director is
looking back (via screenwriter Gilbert Adair's novel The Holy
Innocents: A Romance) at his own time in Paris during the period;
any political fervor he once felt has naturally been tempered by the
passage of years.
What
remains, or should remain, is the spirit of the time. For Bertolucci,
that is a love of cinema and a celebration of sexual ardor. The
Dreamers manages to capture a fleeting glimpse of both, but is
ultimately derailed by allowing a little too much of the real world
to creep back into its proceedings.