|
 |
|
The Dreamers
****
Cinema
Review - March 10, 2004
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. France/
Italy/ USA. 115 minutes. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Produced by Jeremy
Thomas. Written by Gilbert Adair; based on the novel "The Young Innocents"
by Gilbert Adair. Starring Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green, Robin Renucci,
Anna Chancellor.
1968. Paris. The student revolutions. The year
the government cut off funding for the Cinematheque Francaise, and Henri
Langlois got the boot. The year after Godard opened "Weekend", announcing
'the end of cinema'. The height of the Vietnam war. The summer that all the
baby boomers talk about. The summer of the Paris general
strike.
"The Dreamers" evokes the memory
of that time -- not a time I lived through, but one we all know about. It's
the reason that people of a certain generation tell you college will be all
sexual experimentation and philosophical argument and mind-blowing discoveries
of cultural classics. Once upon a star, people really did sit in coffee shops
all day smoking cigarettes and sifting through poetry, sincerely planning
to change the world, talking about Josef von Sternberg and Howard Hawks and
Nicholas Ray, figuring out how to reinvent rock n roll, and doing it with
some semblance of originality.
It's a movie about a young American, polite,
fresh-faced, played by the ever so cute Michael Pitt. He's studying in France
for a year, he's absorbing the beauty of the capital city, and he is in love
with the movies. When he goes to the Cinematheque, he joins the other loner
obsessives in the front few rows; they want the images to reach them first,
before they drift too far through the air. They gaze up and revise for lifetimes
of vivid dreams -- they watch "Bande a Part" and "Shock Corridor" and "King
Kong", and their eyes glaze over in wonder.
Cinematheque is shut down. Protests from the fans.
Out on the barricades, Pitt hooks up with a couple of new friends; a brother
and sister team who pose like the sexiest people ever, who look like they've
seen and done it all. Their names are Theo and Isabelle, they are played
by Louis Garrel and Eva Green, and they take their new pal back to the house.
It's not a mansion, but it's a big enough place, they have their own section,
and their parents are away.
So it begins: A month-long odyssey of sitting
around, eating, drinking, playing mind games on each other, discovering the
lift of marijuana and running through the city in joy. The dreamers talk
about movies, quote lines at each other, play their favourite soundtracks
and pose like their silver screen idols -- as they do, the great cinema images
of old are intercut with the movie's own action.
There is also sex. And the fallout from the tensions
around that sexual discovery, as Pitt begins to wonder whether Garrel and
Green are too wrapped up in their own little bubble to ever discover the
outside world. Which leads to Pitt questioning Garrel's bookish love for
Marxism, and confronting him with something basic that he doesn't want to
hear: "I think if you truly believed what you're saying, you'd be out
there."
"The Dreamers" manages to criticise the hypocrisy
and forced radicalism of its characters while enjoying their company and
loving the textures that surround them; the camera flows, the frames beam
with colour, there are the film clips, and we get bursts of Hendrix and Clapton
licks on the soundtrack. It can do this because it's seen through the eyes
of the Pitt character -- more grounded, and more of an observer, than his
French friends, who are the best of romantics and the least likely people
to ever grow up. And because the film has been directed by Bernardo Bertolucci,
who like no other filmmaker can mix up romance and disgust.
Think of "Before the Revolution", with that
hypnotically energetic camerawork capturing a bunch of uselessly ponderous,
self-hating intellectuals. Of "Last Tango in Paris", where the mood was a
constant uneasy drift between the release of escaping from the real world's
commitments and the anguish that inspired the escape. Or "The Last Emperor",
one of the most visually splendid films ever made, and a story of monarchy
made by an anti-monarchist. The counterculture of the late 60s is one of
the most fascinating things from 20th Century history, and the arguments
will never be settled about how many kids really did seize the man by the
neck and how many sat playing rebels at the weekend. Reading about it is
interesting enough; through the vibrancy of a film like "The Dreamers", it's
thrilling.
COPYRIGHT©
2004 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2004 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2004 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)