Customer Ratings & Reviews

"The Dreamers" is a nostalgic art-house fantasy targeted at Francophiles and cinema lovers, full of references to films and filmmakers from Keaton to Godard. It's as elegant and beautiful as you'd expect a Bernardo Bertolucci movie to be, which is saying a lot. ("The Last Emperor," anyone?) And its plot is like a strange fairy tale, the off-kilter European kind with occasional dark patches and no guarantee of a happy ending. Parts of "The Dreamers" definitely are erotic, which was how this movie was publicized. But there's so much more to like about it than those "hot parts" that it is almost a shame "The Dreamers" could be pigeon-holed by some as a "classy dirty movie." Matthew (Michael Pitt of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch") is an American student and film buff who is studying in 1968 Paris. He meets French kindred spirits Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green) at a demonstration against the closing of the Cinematheque Francais, with which they are so obsessed that they regard the place almost as a church. The three spend most of the rest of the movie discussing cinema, revolution, music and love in the apartment they share, all the while remaining safely cloistered from messier riots and general upheaval right outside their window. Even when Matthew and Isabelle venture outside the apartment (to attend a movie, appropriately), they only become aware of a mountain of garbage behind them on the opposite sidewalk after seeing a news report about the strike on a shop-window TV. Arguments, experiences, accusations of hypocrisy, and a shocking intrusion gradually awaken the trio from their secluded world. Most of the movie essentially is a highly improbable (but no less alluring) fantasy for the "Frasier" set: French free love and flowing fine wine among the articulately opinionated, featuring parents who are ridiculously lenient and tolerant even for the City of Lights. But that's the whole point; Michael has entered the lives of metaphorical dreamers who have no desire to wake, symbolic children who don't want to grow up. He becomes not only their conscience but a catalyst. There's also a lot of humor in the movie, such as Isabelle's disastrous attempt to cook. (Regarding the burnt-black mess she puts on the table, she tells Michael to "pretend you are a visitor in a strange country, and this is the national dish." As Michael gamely puts a forkful of the stuff in his mouth, Theo says it's like watching "vomiting in reverse.") The soundtrack includes lots of period rock (Doors, Dylan, Hendrix, Joplin) that sounds just perfect (although it's a shame that the Beatles' "Revolution" is not present, since it was inspired by the Paris riots depicted in the movie). "The Dreamers" also is peppered with clips from old movies both famous and obscure, including a wonderfully intercut scene of a foot-race through the Louvre. A genuine five-star masterpiece.