The Dreamers (2003)
The Dreamers (2003)
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Language: English, French | Subtitle: English Included | 109min | 522.41MB | 3% Recovery
Genre: Drama | Romance | 9 nominations
IMDb Rating: 7.1/10 (38,623 users)
BRRip 480p - TinyBearDs | MKV | 848 x 476 | x264 600kbps 23.976fps | HE-AACv2 64kbps 2CH
Language: English, French | Subtitle: English Included | 109min | 522.41MB | 3% Recovery
Genre: Drama | Romance | 9 nominations
IMDb Rating: 7.1/10 (38,623 users)
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Paris, spring 1968. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up.
An IMDb Review: At Play When Adults Are Away.:Screenshots:
An American in Paris, 1968, at the height of the turbulence following the firing of Henri Langlois, the founder of the French Cinematheque, meets a pair of fraternal twins, Isabelle and Theo, cinema buffs, sparks a friendship, gets introduced to their intellectual parents, and then are left to their own devices when the parents leave. For young college kids in Any Campus, USA, that would be like letting the cork out of a well-shaken bottle of beer: all that gold liquor would come spewing out in an orgy of bacchanalia and you'd have any combinations of American PIE, PORKY'S, and ANIMAL HOUSE. Not in Paris: these young kids are true idealists in every sense of the word; they are in complete love with the theories of cinema, directors (Theo, in one scene, quotes: "Nicholas Ray is cinema."), and the love of reenacting scenes from their favorite films.
Of course, such reenactments come with sexual overtones, and this threesome play with more than their minds: their own sexuality comes into play. Isabelle is a little more than taken with Matthew, but is bound to Theo in more ways than she can possibly, truly understand. Matthew has discovered them in bed together, naked, and later Isabelle has Theo perform a sexual act "as if he were alone" while she and Matthew watch. Indeed, there is a deep incestuous streak in her relationship with Theo, and she even prides herself in saying he has been "inside" her often. However, a game in which Matthew must forfeit and gets almost raped by both Theo and Isabelle into having sex with her – in which they discover her picture hidden inside his shorts in a compromising place – discloses that Isabelle may have been a virgin all along: her blood, which later arouses her and Matthew as much as it has her shed tears of womanhood, is the smoking gun.
However, there is a moment when Theo makes it quite clear that Matthew is an outsider and that even when he has been "inducted" to be one of them (Bertolucci includes shots of FREAKS as a key element as he does with other movies to enhance a mood, or a parallel sequence). Matthew, despite this sudden warning, glides along, getting deeper and deeper into his threesome, until a moment comes when Isabelle has decided to end it all, herself, her life and that of her brother and her friend. It made me wonder if she was aware that perhaps she couldn't have them both – that a part of her would be bound to Theo, and that other part of her, the more carnal aspect, the one which had made her a woman, would want Matthew. It's a disturbing moment, placid, perfect, and dangerous, but one in which the outside world literally comes crashing in… ending their acquaintance, possibly in an irrevocable manner.
Bertolucci is, as always, a subtle storyteller who knows the type of movie he is making. The music is fantastic, classic rock at its best, deeply rooting it in its year. The sex is graphic – there is full frontal nudity on behalf of the three leads. I don't believe this is shocking – violence, to me, certainly is – inasmuch as necessary to tell such an erotic plot, and to establish the intimacy between the three. The way they interact is as if they'd known each other forever – a closeup in which Matthew exchanges ideas with Isabelle while his head rests above her private part is quite moving and devoid of titillation. Ditto for a scene later in the film which introduces Isabelle, topless, wearing black gloves, in front of a black background, looking like a living Venus de Milo. While Theo, off screen, enjoys sex with another girl and sparks her insane jealousy, she allows Matthew to enjoy her own body as well.
Will people think Bertolucci has lost it? I don't think so. He has never shied away from sex in his films and erotic scenes are intrinsic to the story being told. THE DREAMERS may not quite break grounds, but it is an important movie about an important time in cinema and today no director in Hollywood seems to have what it takes to make this kind of film without calling too much attention to itself. Such a thing is what makes THE DREAMERS a film for people with special attitudes – or Europeans – sex is a natural thing, something which is a part of these characters, and not an excuse to show hard bodies on screen. It's a great little story, deliberate, and somewhat ambiguous by design, bookended by spurts of violence and those notorious riots.
The Dreamers (2003)
