Hey folks, Harry here with Mr Thesaur... I mean Mr Beaks. Often times I like to think that Mr Beaks is actually Alexandra DuPont doing her best VICTOR/VICTORIA impression. Alas, I fear the neverseen Alexandra may be the concoction of Beaks' GLEN OR GLENDA routine. I'm very much looking forward to catching THE DREAMERS, I'm just hoping I get to see it on a big screen somewhere in town. Here ya go...
THE DREAMERS (d. Bernardo Bertolucci, w. Gilbert Adair)
Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE DREAMERS marks a strange retreat into the youthful idealism of the 1960’s era of political upheaval during which the director came of age as an artist. And just as we wince at some of the more anodyne sentiments of that era when confronted with them today, so, too, does his film tend to feel embarrassingly simplistic in its world view. Gone is the difficult, brutal sexuality of his two early 70’s masterpieces, THE CONFORMIST and LAST TANGO IN PARIS, only to be supplanted by the fresh-scrubbed fucking of the painfully photogenic Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel and Eva Green. It’s all so non-threatening, even Pitt’s post-coital smearing of vaginal blood on Green’s face seems shockingly quaint when compared to the indelible transgressions of the director’s previous works.
Though I’m not sure the film succeeds on the level Bertolucci intends it to (the finale feels more like a resigned shrug than heartbreak), it often works marvelously as a celebration of movie love. Based on a novel by Gilbert Adair that appears to have been suggested by Cocteau’s LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES (itself made into a very good picture by Jean-Pierre Melville), the story concerns an unholy Franco-American union of three young students during the turbulent protests kicked off by the French government’s removal of Henri Langlois from his leadership position at the Cinematheque francaise. Matthew (Pitt) is the lonely American seduced into the queasily incestuous inner-world of siblings Theo (Garrel) and Isabelle (Green) through their mutual movie habit, from which they’re forced into a cold turkey withdrawal when the Cinematheque is shuttered. One would think the trio would be inspired to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their celluloid idols (the entire New Wave was out in force during this protest, as were giants like Nicholas Ray and Marcel Carne), but when Theo and Isabelle’s parents take a brief trip to the country, leaving the kids the run of their spacious apartment, they opt instead to block out the din of revolution by getting lost in their love for film.
At first, they’re content to simply reenact their favorite movie moments, be it bellowing out “New York Herald Tribune” on the streets of Paris with the brassy zest of Jean Seberg in BREATHLESS, or sprinting through the Louvre ala Brasseur, Frey and Karina in BAND OF OUTSIDERS. But their game playing quickly becomes erotically charged when Theo loses a dare and is forced to masturbate to a picture of Marlene Dietrich in front of Isabelle and Matthew. Humiliated (or turned on; it’s hard to tell), Theo returns the favor by forcing Matthew and Isabelle to make love on the kitchen floor while he watches (they comply, but he turns away and cooks eggs instead), allowing his new American friend to take his sister’s virginity, and likely lose his own, in the process. Suddenly, Matthew and Isabelle are lovers, fucking the day away while Theo stews alone in his room. When Theo eventually reinserts himself back into the dynamic, all has been irrevocably altered. The adult world, and all its corrupting complexities, has wrecked their idyll, leaving them to either move out into it, or recede and die.
Thematically, THE DREAMERS is most interesting for the way that, particularly in its final moments, it seems to reveal Bertolucci’s disillusionment with his politically radical past. Much like the games played by his main characters, rebellion, he appears to be saying, is for the young, existing only for its inevitable trampling down by authority. When these kids are finally jolted from a suicidal stupor to join in the protest raging outside, we can’t help but shake our heads at the outdated Maoist slogans being chanted by the marching mob. But the options offered by Bertolucci and Adair – love or fight – are both doomed. All is futile.
Best, then, to fuck and talk about movies, which, for the most part, is what the characters do in THE DREAMERS. As should be expected from a Bertolucci film, it’s gorgeously lensed (by Fabio Cianchetti, who also shot BESIEGED) and evocatively scored (the director makes stirring use of the music of the period; most notably, Jimi Hendrix, whose “Third Stone From the Sun” washes over the opening titles). Because this is his first major ratings dust-up since LAST TANGO IN PARIS, the two films are predictably being prepared, but they’re plagued by opposite weaknesses. In LAST TANGO, it was Brando who dominated, bullying the breathtakingly sexy Maria Schneider to the point where the film becomes even crueler toward women than Bertolucci could’ve ever intended. But in THE DREAMERS, it’s the female, Eva Green, who is in command, driving both of her suitors mad with her blossomed carnality. Green’s an absolute stunner, but she’s also got a formidable screen presence that often overwhelms her less substantial co-stars. Of those two, Garrel fares best as the petulant Theo, whereas Pitt comes off as a poor man’s DiCaprio. He’s pretty, but he’s too timid; he lacks Leo’s feral magnetism, and looks downright silly doing knuckle push-ups in between swigs of Jack Daniels.
Though the film connects well enough below the belt, I still found myself enjoying Bertolucci’s quoting of the films that charged up a generation of moviegoer fully appreciating for the first time *the* pivotal art form of the twentieth century. Anyone who’s ever fallen in love with film will surely see themselves in these kids, even if they’re too ashamed to admit it out loud.
Faithfully submitted,
