The Dreamers (2003) [Original Uncut NC-17 version] [Re-UP]

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The Dreamers (2003) [Original Uncut NC-17 version] [Re-UP]

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I love this movie. The experience of it washes over you like the warm water of a languorous bath, and you are changed. While many may find parts of the film objectionable on their face, the same events when taken with the spirit of innocence in which they are offered lend to a more forgiving watchful eye. This movie isn't about right or wrong; it is about experience and the gray areas which define us with more subtlety and grace than anything black and white ever could. The characters and their actions are not here to be judged, or even understood, necessarily. They are just here. Thank goodness.

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The Dreamers (2003) [Original Uncut NC-17 version] [Re-UP]

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It is Paris in 1968, and Matthew (Michael Pitt) is an American abroad. He spends a good deal of his time at the cinema, but it isn't until said cinema is shocked by protest that he meets some fellow movie lovers, French twins Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel). They bring him home to meet their parents (Anna Chancellor and Robin Renucci), poets and thinkers. They offer him friendship, and, when the parents leave for a trip, they invite him into their apartment and into their lives.

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The Dreamers (2003) [Original Uncut NC-17 version] [Re-UP]

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The initial friendship is based on a common love for movies, and we are fortunate that director Bernardo Bertolucci is able to use, to great effect, pieces from the films that the characters reference. They speak in the language of film. It is their common experience. It brings them together and offers an opportunity to know one another through the art that has moved and influenced them all.

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The Dreamers (2003) [Original Uncut NC-17 version] [Re-UP]

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As the intimacy of their acquaintance grows, Matthew is opened into the world of the twins, as they experience it. No longer an outsider to them, he is embraced in the depth of their secret life together. The characters are laid, quite literally, bare, and a sexual undercurrent is exposed to the raw, harsh light of day. Matthew's initial shock and resistance slips into abandon as his life and limbs become entwined with those of the twins. He becomes essential to the deepest parts of what they share, and the trio lets any semblance of external propriety or moral certainty become obscured in a dream-like trance of flesh and experience and emotion.

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The apartment becomes like an island apart, and the three live together unbound by anything. They share thoughts and feelings and desires, never fully waking to the reality of a world separate from this place, daring to hope that it will not intrude. Intrude it does, however, and the spell of the brief moment of suspended time and space is brought crashing into the future, into history.

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Bertolucci elicits strong and fearless performances from his young actors. There is no apparent tension, no "I can't believe we are doing this" pause in momentum, except where it is an appropriate character reaction. They are all in, and the story benefits. No lines are drawn, and there maintains a feeling of limitlessness, the kind which comes with youth and idealism. It is a remarkable feeling to achieve, and, as a member of the audience, I am grateful for the chance to remember it.

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The Dreamers (2003) [Original Uncut NC-17 version] [Re-UP]

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This movie may not be for everyone, a fact I admit and accept. However, if you think it holds the promise of something for you, do not hesitate to find it. It is seldom that one feels truly moved or inspired, and the chance at it is worth any risk.

eFilmcritic

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With three such attractive young leads taking their clothes off and jumping in and out of bed, it's hard not to take your eyes off "The Dreamers." But, ultimately, the viewer has to decide if the film is really about anything more than voyeurism for the sake of voyeurism, and here the movie rather falls short, except to proclaim the obvious, that film itself is a voyeuristic art form. Upon examination, the movie's pretensions to grand ideas is less than meets the eye. Still, what does meet the eye can hardly be discounted. Let's say it's not a film for everyone, and its NC-17 is well deserved.

Movie Metropolis

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… The Dreamers ultimately uses ’68 to create a hymn to Possibility – idealised, improbable and slightly desperate in our era, one so unforgettably defined by Nicole Brenez as “devastated by lucidity like Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea yelling at the burning house where her young children are dying: ‘Nothing is possible any longer!’” It is up to every viewer to decide for him/herself if Bertolucci’s gesture of defiance at this state of things is an irresponsibly senile wish fulfilment fantasy or a heartfelt and usefully inspiring idealisation of a contrastingly hopeful historical zeitgeist. There is undeniably something insane and wilful about The Dreamers‘ rejection of the harsh lessons of history. Something insanely beautiful…

Excerpt from Sense of Cinema

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The Dreamers (2003) [Original Uncut NC-17 version] [Re-UP]

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Special Features:
- Audio commentary by Bernardo Bertolucci, Gilbert Adair, Jeremy Thomas
- Bertolucci Makes The Dreamers (52:24) - documentary
- Outside the Window: Events in France, May 1968 (14:25) - featurette
- Music Video “Hey Joe” by Michael Pitt and the Twins of Evil
- Theatrical trailer
- Bonus trailer for “Garden Stat”