The tale begins with the siblings’ simple invitation of Matthew to dinner at their luxurious apartment when their parents are out of town. The “Langlois Scandal,” as it became known, is the setting for the story, which Bertolucci adapted from “The Holy Innocents,” published in 1988 by the British novelist Gilbert Adair. The three meet outside the Cinematheque Francaise during the 1968 demonstrations, which protested the dismissal of its director, the legendary Henri Langlois. Isabelle (Eva Green) is a darkly nubile young French woman, and Theo (Louis Garrel), her twin brother, is also darkly nubile. Matthew (Michael Pitt) is an American film student in Paris for reasons that are never fully explained. A naive American and a disconcertingly intimate French brother and sister. Reflecting Bertolucci’s own passionate, insatiable love of movies, “The Dreamers” is about a triangle of film-loving students, who are all around 20. On another level, “The Dreamers” is Bertolucci’s response to the genre of American youth movies, specifically the James Dean starrer “Rebel Without a Cause,” a film that questions the whole notion of rebellion and causes, both personal and political. If “Last Tango in Paris” is overestimated and doesn’t hold up particularly well, I am willing to predict that the underestimated “The Dreamers,” a sort of “First Tango in Paris,” would gain in stature with time.
Though the new movie invites comparisons to the 1972 movie that Bertolucci shot in Paris, the ideological and artistic climates in which the two works were made are vastly different. The film stars Michael Pitt, recently seen in the award-winning HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, and with Sandra Bullock in MURDER BY NUMBERS, Eva Green in her feature film debut, and Louis Garrel, who previously appeared in Yolande Zauberman’s LA GUERRE A PARIS.Almost everything you need to know about director Bertolucci as a young man can be found in “The Dreamers,” a companion piece to his seminal work, “Last Tango in Paris,” three decades ago. We were fusing cinema, politics, music, jazz, rock ‘n roll, sex, philosophy.”
“There was something magic in the 60s,” Bertolucci recalls, “in that we were … well, let’s use the word ‘dreaming’. Their love of cinema took them to the birthplace of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), immersing them in a strong international cinema culture.
THE DREAMERS strikes a personal chord for both Bertolucci and Adair, for although their paths never crossed, they were both living in Paris at the end of the 60s, experiencing the events against which the film is set. The screenplay, adapted for the screen from his original novel, is by English author and film critic Gilbert Adair. It marks his third film shot in Paris, following THE CONFORMIST and the Oscar-nominated LAST TANGO IN PARIS. THE DREAMERS was helmed by Bernardo Bertolucci, whose film THE LAST EMPEROR swept the 1987 Academy Awards garnering nine Oscars including Best Director and Best Picture. Set against the turbulent political backdrop of France in the spring of 1968 when the voice of youth was reverberating around Europe, THE DREAMERS is a story of self-discovery as the three students test each other to see just how far they will go.
Here they make their own rules as they experiment with their emotions and sexuality while playing a series of increasingly demanding mind games. Left alone in Paris whilst their parents are on holiday, Isabelle (Eva Green) and her brother Theo (Louis Garrel) invite Matthew (Michael Pitt), a young American student, to stay at their apartment.