Title: The Dreamers |
Release Date: 2004 |
Nationality and Language: |
Running time: 115 Min |
|
Distributor and Production Company: Fox Searchlight |
Director; Writer: Bernardo Bertolucci, based on novel The Holy Innocents by Gilbert Adair (1988) |
Producer: |
Cast: Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel |
Technical: HDCAM |
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Review: In 1968 an American Exchange student Matthew (Michael Pitt, who rather resembles Leonardo Di Caprio) gets taken in by Isabelle and Theo (Eva Green and a very juvenile looking Louis Garrel), fraternal twins looking for someone to initiate, when there celebrated father (an author) goes away from their Paris apartment. Outside left-wing protests against French labor policy are mounting. Matthew is a film buff, and the film often breaks its narrative by showing parallel passages in various mostly black-and-white films, one with a demonstration of CinemaScope. In time, this movie becomes a “coming of age” story with interplay between the movies they watch and their lives in this old apartment with its rich “geography.” Pitt’s wholesome performance (although he smokes) makes Matthew an effective protagonist, like the young adults on a number of dramatic TV shows today. Matthew seems to simply want to generalize or enlarge his “moral world” by experiencing things as a young man, before he makes up his mind about a lot of things. At the beginning of the film, he is an effective narrator, as he talks about film buffs and real life. The story will flip
like “a dream” between outside politics, the characters intimate experiments,
and old films, as if they were all parallel worlds. In the mean time, Matthew
finds that his own (as well as Isabelle’s) sexual initiation (after a
physical one sprinting under the time clock through the Loeuvre)
turns out to be quite a tribunal itself. He gets undressed in dirty dancing
fashion, all right (so that he can deflower her -- as he is chased through the apartment by
Theo he manages to change his shirt from a polo to a fully buttoned one
before getting “captured” and held in place from behind by Theo while
Isabelle encroaches from the bottom – quite curious), but draws the line at a
most critical point, where, at least, he is taunted (as “proof of love”) with
possible humiliation starting with the application of shaving cream to a
private area. He is not interested in something that invokes a male flip of Boxing
Helena. (No Lorena Bobbit here, please.) He
lectures the twins that they need to grow up and start to leave their fantasy
world for real lives. There is the
constant sexual tension between Matthew and Theo also (although Theo says
Matt is not his “type” just before his sister is to be deflowered), as in a
bathtub scene that reminds me of The Talented Mr. Ripley. But their male
bonding turns to political discourse about revolution, war, violence, about
who is expendable for politicians. (Matthew says he is not in The commentary of the The (Ann Beeson of the ACLU made a reference to this film in
her oral arguments before
the Supreme Court on A “ones complement” to the Bertolucci film is a My Super 8 Season (“Ma Saison Super 8,” 2005, Du Contraire / Anitprod, dir. Alessandro Avellis, France, 71 min, sug NC-17) traces the “left wing” in France starting with the 1968 protests above, all the way into the 1970s, as a docudrama involving several characters. There is Marc (Axel Philippon) jump starting a gay rights movement while his platonic female friend Julie (Celia Pelastre) pushes worker’s rights. Marc angers his father, a cop, involved in a bust with a factory worker Andre, who claims to be straight but becomes attracted to Marc. Though the relationships roughly parallel those of the Bertolucci film, the pace is much faster and, even with the explicit nude scenes, the movie loses the tension that the Bertolucci film developed with this subject matter. In the film’s middle, there are interesting ideological discussions about how gays fit in to the people’s and women’s movements; there are some objections to gays even on the left, and odd discussions about the idea that male homosexuality fan reinforce stereotypes about “virility.” In fact, as the years progress, Marc appears more “mature” physically, although there is a problem that the characters tend to look and act too much alike, a problem within far left movements. The title of the film refers to Andre’s habit of shooting Super 8 videos (with 70s technology) of sex scenes, that look even too grainy for “Deep Throat.” My Brother Is an Only Child (“Mio fratello e figlio unico”, 2007, ThinkFilm /
Vertigo / Warner Independent Pictures / Cattelya,
dir. Daniele Luchetti, novel by Antonio Pennacchi, The Bertolucci film makes a
interesting view of a young man entering “life” with
“experiences,” but we can make an interesting comparison to the philosophical
film In Praise of Love (2001 – “Eloge de l‘amour” dir. Jean-Luc
Godard, New Yorker Films, Manhattan Pictures and Studio Canal, PG, 98 min)
which is supposed to present a ponderous example of French “New Wave” film.
Structurally, this is a “film in two parts,” the first in a garish
black-and-white, with wonderful precision as it creates its abstract Parisian
world, and then equally garish color video for a long epilogue that happens
two years earlier. All of which brings us to the “plot” or story. That’s hard
to pin down. There is an artist trying to cast his film, a composer with a
cantata to sell, and American media businessmen more interest in French
resistance fighters in World War II. (Actually, the artist is trying to
develop a project about three couples in different ages; one of the women
dies, and her story, which itself involved another film, two years earlier
will make the second half.) These elements come together like a dream. But it
actually strikes close to home. The artist apparently has a few authored books,
one of which has managed to sell just three hundred copies. Another one seems
to be full of blank pages. And the artist has somewhat separated himself from
the organic experience of living. And this gets to the point of the substance
of the film, especially the black-and-white part, as a series of a lot of
philosophical, existential discussions (I expected to hear H.G. Well’s
“Meanwhile” and stoics and epicureans come up—a 12th grade book
report for me, but that never quite came up. Or maybe Sartre’s “Nausea.”)
There is the woman talking about what happens when someone grows older, and
outgrows her earlier connection to everyday experience, and this gets
elaborated into talk about childhood, adulthood, old age. Then there is the
whole issue of realism: one line is “Most people have the guts to live their
life but not to imagine it.” There is talk of parallels: history being
overrun by technology, and politics by gospel. Americans have no real
history, so they resort to cheesy capitalism. Notre Musique (“Our Music”) (2004,
Wellspring, 79 min, sug PG-13) is Godard’s must
recent New Wave film. His concept is draped over snippets of classical music,
from which we reconstruct our own lifetime experience of our world. But the
world is divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The first and
last make a brief prelude and epilogue of the film—Hell consisting of shots
of war and Holocaust, and Heaven being in the woods, by the water, with
healthy looking young adults milling around. In between is the hour long
Purgatory— Alphaville (“une etrange aventure
de Lemmy Caution”,1965,Janus/Criterion,
dir. Jean Luc-Godard, 99 min, PG-13) is on one level a film noir like “ Last Tango in The Conformist (“Il Conformista”, 1970, 1900 (“Novocento”,
1976, |
Related reviews: Inside Deep Throat La Dolce Vita Freaks Sunshine |
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