The Dreamers
U.S. Release Date: 2/6/2004 (limited)
Set in the spring of 1968, "The Dreamers" introduces one American student (Michael Pitt) to a sexually curious Parisian teen (Eva Green) and her moody sibling (Louis Garrel), shuts them up in a spacious apartment and lets nature take its course. It sounds like the blueprint for a late-night Cinemax offering -- and, in other hands, it might have been -- but since the director is Bernardo Bertolucci ("Last Tango in Paris," "The Last Emperor") you can be assured there's going to be a lot of soul-searching in between the erotic encounters.
What there isn't much of, disappointingly, is substance, or even anything terribly memorable.
Up until its final moments, "The Dreamers" is all too aptly titled. These kids spend plenty of time exchanging trivia, experiencing momentary traumas and rolling around in bed, but they certainly don't accomplish much, aside from occasionally freaking each other out. If a world-class cinematographer and his team set up shop in your old dorm room during one particularly boozy weekend, the end result would probably look very much like this: two hours of lusciously photographed lollygagging, accompanied by a killer soundtrack.
Each of the central trio is film-savvy and, to varying degrees, free-spirited. No one, unfortunately, is particularly fascinating.
Baby-faced Matthew (Pitt), who has come from San Diego to attend screenings at Paris' famous Cinematheque Francaise, has a tendency to speak in a slightly drowsy voice that makes even the shortest sentences seem to drag. Isabelle (Green) is your garden-variety young neurotic, except for the fact that she sees nothing unusual about sleeping in the nude next to Theo (Garrel), her twin brother. Matthew appears to be lusting after both of them, although Theo finally doesn't respond; this may be the only film in history in which an American was portrayed as being more sexually adventurous than his French counterpart.
As the NC-17 rating indicates, Bertolucci puts a premium on sensuality. Even so, the hints of incestuousness between Theo and Isabelle keep eroticism at arm's length, and few will be turned on by the sight of the three soaking in bathwater Isabelle has accidentally contaminated. "Dreamers" is actually more entertaining in the rare moments when Matthew, Isabelle and Theo show off their minds instead of their bodies by matching wits or recreating great movie moments (such as the scene in "Queen Christina" in which Greta Garbo tries to memorize the details of the bedroom she's shared with her lover, or the race through the Louvre from director Jean-Luc Godard's "Bande a Part").
Bertolucci sprinkles clips from such masterworks as "Breathless," "Top Hat" and "Freaks" throughout the story to comment on the action and illustrate what the characters are thinking about. While they're great to see, they also remind you that instead of sitting through "The Dreamers," you could be at home watching a real movie.
The most logical explanation of the bizarre premise: Bertolucci, an inarguably brilliant Oscar-winning filmmaker, is also quite the perv."
