THE DREAMERS review

THE DREAMERS begins as a sonnet to cinema and ends in fire and destruction. The first 40 minutes of the film I was sitting there in the theater on the edge of my seat smiling that smile that film geeks smile when they’re getting a treat.

Gilbert Adair gives such a wonderful command of description to Michael Pitt’s Matthew’s narration at the beginning of this film. Describing not just “Paris, 1968,” but also the excitement… the tangible arc of electricity that jumped from filmgoer to filmgoer in the French Cinematheque as cinema of all varieties were unleashed upon the screen. The first that we get to glimpse being SHOCK CORRIDOR by Sam Fuller and… what a film to use to portray the awakening of one’s mind. I remember in 1997 when the Austin Film Society put on the Sam Fuller retrospect… discovering not just SHOCK CORRIDOR, but I SHOT JESSE JAMES, BARON OF ARIZONA, STEEL HELMET, the fucking amazing PARK ROW & PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET. Then there was CHINA GATE and FORTY GUNS. The indescribable NAKED KISS and then there was WHITE DOG. Prior to the retrospect, the only Sam Fuller film I knew was THE BIG RED ONE, and no matter how many years I live, I’d never forget Mark Hamill using his gun to open that oven… or the compulsive firing into the Nazi repeatedly… the look on Mark’s face… that was the horror of war. Of what it can do to a man. I remember going to those screenings and sitting on the third row of the Texas Union Theater -- the theater where I discovered my love for film and deciding to begin watching as many films as I could ever get my hands on. I also remember the night when Richard Linklater came out to tell us that Sam Fuller was not going to be able to join us that night, because… unfortunately he had broke his leg at his home in France and that he sent his best wishes to all of us. About 2 months later he was dead.

The opening 40 minutes of THE DREAMERS is that joyous discovery of not just film, but the freaks that worship it. The ones that chant “Google Goggle We Accept You, One of Us,” to each new member of their cult d’cine. Matthew is an American in Paris – at the time of the Vietnam War… a period of civil disobedience and political awakening seemingly everywhere in the world. And here amongst the protests and the films he discovers a brother / sister pair that speak English, though they be French and they also are as in love with film, if not more so than Matthew himself.

That is such a beautiful thing, such a wonderful moment for a film geek. The addict that lives in cinemas letting film pour over his brain, marinating in the chemical embrace of both light & shadow upon a silver screen. Too often that film geek has gone through life feeling isolated from everyone and anyone. Believing that he is the only one like himself. The only one that loves movies so much that he sits so close he just hopes to one day stick to the images and become part of the movie itself. Then… you discover kindred spirits… Folks that speak in film-ese… Quoting not just the lines of films, but the movements and situations of the characters. For most of you, this may be as simple as waving your hand in front of an automatic door opener and saying in a deep voice, “ALL TOO EASY!” and getting a silly grin on your face… Here… Well here you have film geeks that’s savantistic abilities go into the world of Garbo and Cagney. Daring each other to capture the reference that they are ape-ing.

Meeting a stranger… a person you’ve never done this with before and discovering that they can complete the scenes or the lines there is a feeling of some bizarre soulful freak connection… That they are truly… One of us. Like Dian Fossey being accepted into the Apes by joining in their social grooming habits… well, Matthew gets accepted into Isabelle and Theo’s world.

Now lest you think this is just a simple world of happiness, innocence and filmic adaptations… The above text is probably more aptly placed upon the world of our American character. The brother and sister… Twins… well they have issues. They sleep in the same bed cuddled together naked. They use the restroom together in the morning and share their baths. If they don’t get each other’s film references there are penalties, embarrassments and even quasi-tortures involved. If you get it wrong, you must submit to the concoctions of the other. THIS – is where the film begins to get weirder.

As soon as Sex enters the equation, the film is about the discovery of more than the trivia each other knows, but their bodies. For the Twins – these things go hand in hand… For the American Matthew, the melding of bodies and the sharing of each other… this isn’t a simple game or a way of playing around. This is love. He is utterly in love with Isabelle… and if you’re a male film geek… and even some of you female film geeks… or even if you’re just able to live and breathe, you’ll fall utterly in love with Eva Green’s Isabelle. First off, her personality is infectious. Once you get your first taste of her attention, how could one ever turn away.

Then there’s her physical beauty. She is radiant in the film. Absolutely beautiful. Though, I’m trying to think of the last time Bertolucci made a woman a terrible sight, and frankly… all of his “ladies” glow upon his screens. She is that unicorn that so many film geeks don’t believe in… the stunningly beautiful woman that has an all-encompassing passion for cinema. I swear to you, they not only exist… but there are many. Falling in lust-n-love with Isabelle is a dangerous thing because she and her brother are two insects stuck in an intellectual petrified shell of amber… they will not change or grow. They have always had each other and always will. To be with them is to discard that outside world where politics screams out at you, where you socialize in larger groups… this is about living in that amber with them. No outside world, just what it is each of you wants… seekers of pleasure both celluloid and flesh. Not a terrible place to visit, but a tiring place to live.

By the time we enter the final act – Matthew is beginning to want these two to evolve a bit, to grow as people. To sever, to a degree, the alleged psychic bond between them and to become unique individuals instead of a binary system. At the same time, they are very young. All of them. With youth comes a degree of being unable to compromise one’s set opinions. An inability to work things out. And it is this set of issues that begins to create fissures in their perfect utopian filmic lives.

The triumph of the film is just how much I hated the last act. I loved these characters. That first 40 minutes was like a dream, the rest of the film is the descent into nightmares and ultimately the awakening. Bertolucci creates an absolutely absorbing film that should just suck you in. The most aggravating thing in the film for me was the realization that I didn’t own a copy of BLONDE VENUS – one of Josef von Sternberg’s masterpieces. Just seeing a bit of that musical number with the Gorilla in the midsts… well, it has been too long sense I’ve seen Marlene Dietrich battling her passions for Cary Grant and Herbert Marshall. My mom was a Dietrich super-freak, and why these films haven’t hit on DVD I’ll never know, but I’m frustrated.

Alright – I’ll drop it.

Now a lot of you are probably wanting to know about the “Sex” of the film, that which nabbed Bertolucci an NC-17. Well, this isn’t porn star pump pump pump and the cum shot. This is love making, not a gynecological film. You’ll see the stars’ from head to toe, going at it and being in the throes of passion. Much of it is hot, some of it is a bit disgusting and some of it… well, could be a bad influence on you.

Ultimately though, the film succeeds gloriously. The characters are so alive and vibrant that you just want to spend more and more time with them before their world will crumble. The film references are great, and if you see this film and don’t know the films that they refer to, write the titles down and then seek them out. I promise you, each and every film screened or referenced in this film is one you should love. Oh, and if you seek out THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT… be sure to also seek out Tashlin’s WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? That’s a GREAT double feature.