The Dreamers (2003)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.
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And in one of the most exotic scenes, Isabelle imitates Greta Garbo in Queen Christina caressing the furniture while remembering a special night of love.
I loved watching the various homages (including a lovely bit where Eva Green blends into the "Queen Christina"-era Greta Garbo) and I even discovered, after a while, a bit of affection for that questionable finale.
Likewise, it's positively dreamy when Isabelle reenacts a scene from "Queen Christina," starring Greta Garbo, that's spliced in with her homage, and fairly engages in a back-and-forth exchange with Jean Seberg in "Breathless."
Both Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina (1933) and next week’s Asheville Film Society showing of Josef von Sternberg’s Blonde Venus (1932)—both fine in their own right—were deliberately placed as lead-ins to Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003).
Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor, a film that not only inspired the Nouvelle Vague, but also brilliantly challenged U.S. political institutions and moral presumptions.
In the first sequence, before the film has a chance to find its own point of view and its own images, The Dreamers is already basking in the reflected light and shadow of greatness, as Matthew watches Shock Corridor at the Cinémathèque.
If Sam Fuller 's Cinémathèque fave Shock Corridor imagined the inmates taking over the asylum, the early "events of May," 1968, found the audience in the theater becoming actors in the streets.
"The Dreamers" kicks off with the first protests over the Langlois firing, seen through the eyes of Matthew (Michael Pitt), an American who has come to Paris to "study", though he seems to have spent all of his time in the front row of the Cinematheque ("We wanted to get the images first") soaking up things like "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Shock Corridor".
In the scene close to the opening of The Dreamers when the threesome watch Fuller's Shock Corridor at the Cinémathèque, Bertolucci's way of filming the relationship between spectator and image sets it apart from the cinema scenes in the other films mentioned.
He begins with a clip from Fuller's masterpiece Shock Corridor (1963), but The Dreamers doesn't move with any Fuller-like intensity, any of that crackling, pulp immediacy It hasn't learned anything from Fuller.
In other words, the threesome's delight in replaying scenes from Band of Outsiders and Jules and Jim is shared by the director, for whom the art of making love to the French New Wave is nothing new.
Suddenly idle, they spend their time trading memories of beloved films and even acting them out -- in one scene, the trio re-enact the race through the Louvre from Godard'sBand of Outsiders.
Instead, they spend their days recreating moments from classic cinema (they go tearing through the length of the Louvre, hoping to beat the time of the characters in "Band of Outsiders"), debating film theory (including the inevitable discussion on the worth of Jerry Lewis) and engage in trivia contests, with those unable to supply the correct answer forced to pay an embarrassing "penalty".
Matthew, Isabelle, and Theo ( Louis Garrel ) cocoon themselves in the twin's apartment and test each other through a series of games, acting out favorite scenes from the films that inspire them; in an inspired move of his own, Bertolucci integrates classic scenes seamlessly into the plot: breathless Anna Karina running through the Louvre in Jean-Luc Godard's Band of Outsiders is followed by breathless Eva Green racing the same halls.
Perhaps the most exciting scene has our heroes leaving their apartment for a rare trip into Paris, duplicating the scene in Godard's Band of Outsiders where the three main characters race through the Louvre in record time.
During his contrived climax, Bertolucci�s use of the sublime ending of Mouchette only makes apparent the hopelessness of his attempt to give The Dreamers a dignity it doesn�t deserve.
Even when Isabelle's attempt at suicide is intercut with the suicide from Bresson's Mouchette (1967) it seems more like a spontaneous expression of her sense of tragedy than an intellectual comment on her action.
I love how they are able to find in the cinema a set of moral standards � a clip from Freaks demonstrates their sense of camaraderie as much as one from Mouchette demonstrates a sense of moral consequence or Marlene Dietrich�s Blonde Venus song and dance routine keys them into the exoticism of sex.
Given the plot, it's odd that Truffaut's Jules and Jim is never alluded to in any way, and the references to other movies that are included usually work better for the Cincinnati crowd (with its narrower choices) than for Parisians or Chicagoans (except for the one most American viewers are likely to find inexplicable -- clips from the end of Robert Bresson's Mouchette to contextualize a suicide attempt, which I found offensive).
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I love how they are able to find in the cinema a set of moral standards � a clip from Freaks demonstrates their sense of camaraderie as much as one from Mouchette demonstrates a sense of moral consequence or Marlene Dietrich�s Blonde Venus song and dance routine keys them into the exoticism of sex.
Some of these moments are inspired, as when Isabelle can-cans with a mop, her dance intercut with footage from the film she's emulating, in this case "Blonde Venus," starring Marlene Dietrich.
The Dreamers is based on Gilbert Adairâs novel of the same name, which was based on Melvilleâs Fifties film Les Enfants Terribles (which was itself based on the novel by Jean Cocteau).
The Holy Innocents was inspired by Jean Cocteau's Les enfants terribles and is interesting mainly for the wit and invention of the prose -- even the incest has a highly literary pedigree.
(Could Bertolucci's 30-year-old Last Tango in Paris be anything but Breathless for heavy breathers, complete with climactic big bang?)
And I should point out that the French love of America reflected in the plot of The Dreamers, and Godard's Breathless before it, continues unabated, even if the American love of France appears to be on the wane.
Likewise, it's positively dreamy when Isabelle reenacts a scene from "Queen Christina," starring Greta Garbo, that's spliced in with her homage, and fairly engages in a back-and-forth exchange with Jean Seberg in "Breathless."
In other words, the threesome's delight in replaying scenes from Band of Outsiders and Jules and Jim is shared by the director, for whom the art of making love to the French New Wave is nothing new.
Given the plot, it's odd that Truffaut's Jules and Jim is never alluded to in any way, and the references to other movies that are included usually work better for the Cincinnati crowd (with its narrower choices) than for Parisians or Chicagoans (except for the one most American viewers are likely to find inexplicable -- clips from the end of Robert Bresson's Mouchette to contextualize a suicide attempt, which I found offensive).
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Over thirty years later, the times have changed, but Bertolucci is exploring similar themes with British author Gilbert Adair, adapting his own 1988 novel, "The Holy Innocents".
Gilbert Adair wrote the script, adapting his 1988 novel The Holy Innocents: A Romance, which is, unlike the movie, extremely literary.
The Dreamers is based on a novel called The Holy Innocents by the sometime film critic Gilbert Adair, who adapted it for the screen—and who has, unprecedentedly, rewritten it into a book called The Dreamers.
The 63-year-old Bernardo Bertolucciâs ("Last Tango in Paris"/"Before the Revolution"/"The Sheltering Sky") playful erotic drama The Dreamers is adapted from the 1988 novel The Holy Innocents: A Romance by English author and film critic Gilbert Adair, a book inspired by Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles.
The latest movie from the director of Last Tango in Paris is all about reaffirming wistful memories of a place and time -- Paris, May 1968 -- when revolution seemed possible and worthy, even if the crass commercialists and cynics have long since won out.
Michael Pitt plays the American in Paris who comes into their lives, much like Gene Kelly did in, you know, "An American in Paris", or more aptly, like the then not-so-morbidly obese Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris".
(Could Bertolucci's 30-year-old Last Tango in Paris be anything but Breathless for heavy breathers, complete with climactic big bang?)
As tender and tentative as its trio of young characters, The Dreamers is no successor to Last Tango in Paris -- it's more like a moony, adolescent cousin.
Both The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris, the movies that guaranteed him a lifelong career, strike me at bottom as unconvincing theses about the incipience of fascism and the ironic boredom lurking within ribald, anonymous sex.