The Dreamers

The Dreamers (2003) is about three young people shutting themselves inside an apartment in Paris in 1968. Matthew is an American student, obsessed with cinema and a regular at the Cinémathèque Française. There he meets the twins Isabelle and Theo. When their parents leave the city the three stay in the flat and forget what is happening outside. A game is set up indoors: a film scene is acted out, and whoever cannot identify it pays a forfeit. The forfeits escalate and the boundaries between the three dissolve. The film is dense with references. While the characters argue about a scene the camera cuts directly to the footage itself. The opening is a real event. In February 1968 the culture minister André Malraux dismissed Henri Langlois, the founder of the Cinémathèque Française, and a large protest followed in Paris with filmmakers in the streets. For the young it stood for the arbitrariness of their government and is counted as a precursor to May. Bertolucci put the actual newsreel of that day into the film and had his actors speak the same words those people spoke in 1968; fiction and archive interlock. When May arrives the street comes inside and the three split for the first time. It was Eva Green's first film. It received the highest classification in America and Bertolucci refused to cut it. It runs 115 minutes. Good for: cinephile films, the sixties, and Bertolucci. Less good for: the sexual content is very explicit and the characters' politics stays shallow.