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Review: Allison Browning | Rating:
2
BERNARDO Bertolucci's The Dreamers has recently been described
as 'porn', 'pretentious wank' and the man himself a 'dirty old
bastard'.
The movie is provocative and treads where most other directors
fear, and iIt is for this reason that the film will win over many.
Bertolucci appears unafraid; perhaps even embracing of the waves
this film has already created.
Set in Paris, in the volatile and expressive political Spring
of 1968, The Dreamers follows is protagonist, Mathew (Michael
Pitt), a young American student and film fanatic, who befriends
the like-minded film buff/students, Isabelle (Eva Green), and
her twin brother, Theo (Louis Barrel).
Mathew is invited to stay with the close siblings while their
parents are away for a length of time. Initially relieved at meeting
his first French friends, Michael lets his guard down, but as
things progress, he slowly becomes entangled in the intense and
perverse nature of their emotional and physical game playing.
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Bertolucci creates a sublime environment for these characters,
using a magical combination of light, shadow and reflection, accentuated
by wonderful costume and set design. It is these elements, that
may go unnoticed, that are so much a part of the seductive beauty
of the film.
However, The Dreamers failed to connect a contemporary audience
to the political events of the time. Mathew gives a brief overlaid
speech about the time in which the film is set, but this is not
enough to understand the character's passions and motivations,
which appear to be heavily influenced by the political and artistic
events happening around them.
The Dreamers treads on sexual territory and imagery that could
be described as deviant, but where other films have avoided nudity
and the reality of sex and post coital intimacy truthfully, The
Dreamers presents this in a very real way.
It is about time too. In a beautiful scene, Mathew lays on Isabelle's
thigh with a full frontal of Isabelle in view. By some, this may
be described as self-indulgent, but sex and sexuality does not
always happen from the waist up and Bertolicci acknowledges this.
"A film maker is like a peeping Tom," states Mathew,
in one scene.
Perhaps this is the case for Bertolucci. Peeping Tom or otherwise,
the man has created a piece of film that defies most moral ground,
and, most importantly, provokes conversation and divided opinion
as all good art should.
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