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In a way, Bernado Bertolucci's The Dreamers isn't that far from Roman Coppola's CQ. Both films claim their own heritage to the masters of 60's cinema, particularly to the French new wave, and both directors have a legitimate right to implicate themselves in the process—Coppola because of his father's legacy and his privileged childhood, growing up in the shadow of cinematic figures, and Bertolucci for having contributed at least one major piece to this art history: The Last Tango in Paris. Of course the treatments differ: Coppola goes for a light pop approach while Bertolucci uses heavy erotic-philosophical tones. The Dreamers is an adaptation of The Holy Innocents, a book by Gilbert Adair, where a young American (Michael Pitt) meets two French teenagers, a brother (Louis Garrel) and sister (Eva Green), and engages in a weird intellectual and sexual threesome with them. A few bores might complain that the film doesn't go far enough to show the homosexual and incestuous tones of the relationship between the 3 characters, but this is actually the only aspect of the film where the director isn't too heavy-handed, the last scene, in the tent, clearly implies it. The state of cinephilia From the inside of the apartment, full of books and curio, to quoting classics, both visually through clips and verbally through the characters constantly referring to films, Bertolucci has built his film like a museum, creating a shrine to cinema. As The Dreamers takes place in the 60's, we are plunged into a world where Jean-Claude Godard & Alain Resnais are, among others, the great masters of this art. Blurring the limits of time, Bertolucci even superimposes some archive footage featuring New wave emblematic actor Jean-Pierre Léaud during a protest with actual footage of him repeating the event (he is around 40 years older but hasn't changed much); Jean-Pierre Kalfon, another figure of French cinema, also plays himself. In the same way, the filmmaker copies the masters as his characters re-enact some movie scenes, Godard's Band of Outsiders in particular, shown in parallel with the original sequences. Sadly enough, these very films quoted by the director and his characters are still regarded with the same passion and an almost-religious respect, which means that during the last 40 years, there haven't been that many pictures that were able to rival them. Fully intentional or not, The Dreamers conceals in its heart a powerful mise-en-abîme, a statement on the actual identities of two cinemas, which is established through the characters' incarnations. Pitt, with his good looks, his innocence and his attachment to values symbolizes American cinema—and I mean traditional and classic American cinema not summer flicks. He is pure, curious, ready to experiment, passionate about other European film culture in which he draws his own inspiration. Garrel represents the cerebral facet of French cinema, highly cultivated, dark & beautiful, pretentious and perverted. As for Green, she obviously embodies the sexual side of French cinema, a gorgeous femme fatale generous with her body. It is therefore not a coincidence that they are twins since they are the 2 inseparable sides of the same entity. After their contact, Pitt will be corrupted, but in the end, he will survive the experiment without losing his identity. As the three protagonists engage in passionate conversations about Godard, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and westerns, the movie shows how complementary and intertwined American and French film cultures are, while undoubtedly remaining on almost opposite poles. Eroticism If The Dreamers can be defined as a shrine to cinema, Bertolucci has also built his film as a sanctuary of sex. Fellow filmmaker Tinto Brass (Caligula, All Ladies Do It) often found erotic inspiration in the city of Venice, assimilating the closed and isolated city to an alcove, propitious to the games of pleasure—see The Key. Following the same concept, Bertolucci has found his own alcove in the heart of Paris, and the obscure apartment is the alcove within the alcove, just like in the Last Tango in Paris. One therefore won't be surprised to see that the ultimate act of sex, the threesome that will happen off-screen, will take place in a tent set inside the apartment, the third and most intimate alcove, sheltering them from the rules of the society. All three—charismatic—actors offer their bodies to the screen without restraint, but the filmmaker manages to preserve the beauty of the act, creating eroticism—with a parsimonious dose of provocation—rather than vulgarity. This also allows Pitt to confirm his image as a talented and edgy actor who takes risks, logically following his participation in Larry Clark's sulfurous Bully. And since we're talking about Larry Clark, one will notice the hypocrisy of the MPAA that allows the erotically-charged work of an Italian director to be released unrated in the US, while Larry Clark's Ken Park still hasn't been greenlit to reach our screens. While both films feature threesomes between teenagers, it looks like somewhat it is more accepted when it happens far away, in "the old Europe", unless sex among teenagers never happens in the U.S. Politics & revolutions For the neophytes, the film takes place during the May 68 Paris events, the film showing the sexual and political revolution in parallel, which is the weakest attempt of the picture. The Dreamers opens with a cultural protest in reaction to the firing of the president of the French cinematheque, but then slightly slides into political commentary, mostly through the Garrel character. By the end of the film, when the Paris riots erupt, the international audience might be confused, thinking the two protests might be linked as the student and communist roots of the insurrection are not clearly explained. In the end, when Pitt's character leaves the apartment to go back to the real word, he knows he's been experiencing a moment which is unique. So do we.
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