Product Description

From Academy Award®-winning director Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor, 1987), comes an erotic tale of three young film lovers brought together by their passion for movies -- and each other. When Isabelle and Theo (Eva Green, Louis Garrel) invite Matthew (Michael Pitt) to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and anything is possible. Featuring an engaging, seductive cast, The Dreamers is a ?spellbinding, provocative feast!" (Ebert & Roeper)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3024 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-07-13
• Rating: NC-17
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 115 minutes

Amazon.com
A love letter to movies (and the French new wave of the 1960s in particular), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers starts with a 1968 riot outside of a Parisian movie palace then burrows into an insular love triangle. Matthew (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), an expatriate American student, bonds with a twin brother and sister, Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Garrel), over their mutual love of film--they not only quote lines of dialogue, they act out small bits and challenge each other to name the cinematic source. Matthew suspects the twins of incest, but that doesn't stop him from falling into his own intimacies with Isabelle. As the threesome becomes threatened, Paris succumbs to student riots. The Dreamers aspires to be kinky, but the results are more decorative than decadent; nonetheless, the movie's lively energy recalls the careless and vital exuberance of Godard and Truffaut. --Bret Fetzer

DVD features
Though The Dreamers is rife with naked flesh, the DVD extras focus more on history and politics--one featurette describes the student unrest of May 1968, which led to national strikes (at one point, 10 million workers were on strike); Gilbert Adair, who adapted the screenplay from his novel, describes the lingering smell that hung over Paris from uncollected garbage and residual tear gas. A making-of featurette is impressively in-depth, richly exploring the intersection of cinema, politics, and sex in director Bernardo Bertolucci's mind. Then the commentary track itself features three different perspectives: Bertolucci focuses on the philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings of the film, Adair discusses its relationship to his own experience in 1968 and the process of adaptation, and producer Jeremy Thomas lays out a more logistical perspective on the making of the movie. All in all, a dense and fertile exploration of the movie's development. The NC-17 cut is the version that played in theaters. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
An American college student named Matthew (Michael Pitt) is in Paris in 1968 and soaking up as many movies as he can. When the government cracks down on the state-sponsored Cinémathèque Française, he gets caught up in the demonstrations and meets a red-bereted beauty named Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother, Théo (Louis Garrel), who has the looks of a debauched medieval priest. The director, Bernardo Bertolucci, loves to create a hothouse. In "Last Tango in Paris," he used enclosed space to explore the limits of romantic desire, but here the conceit is a different kind of exuberance: cinephilia. Isabelle, Théo, and Matthew argue endlessly about movies and see themselves as characters playing roles. As the three embark on increasingly risqué sexual games, Bertolucci longs to re-create the moment when film, politics, and sex mutually reinforced each other as the preoccupations of youth. It's a saddening nostalgia, and the movie, despite its attempt to shock us with incest and perversities, has an air of inconsequence about it. The three aren't making a revolution in this hothouse, they're making a listless blue movie. In French and English. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

More than a masterpiece...
...this film is (for the lack of a better word) a dream--a dream you would not willingly want to wake up from. Completely and utterly mesmerizing, "The Dreamers" pays homage to film, Paris, the 60's, and love. Apart from some of the awkward moments this movie tends to present sporadically, the movie itself was not mired by the abnormalities of some of the main characters. Though, this movie is one of the greatest I've ever viewed, it is not for everyone and cannot be readily recommended without reviewing some of the pros and cons I caught.

CONS:
-First off, if you're offended, in any way, by frontal nudity from either sex... caution: it contains a lot!
-For some, if the ending is a chief factor in deciding that you like a movie, it is possible you could be dissapointed (it ends in an unlikely manner). But if you can appreciate the ending, it doesn't hurt the film at all... Maybe people were disappointed by the ending because they didn't want it to end :)
-If not accustomed to slower-moving movies, based on a load of story depth or the like opposed to action or thiller movies, then it could be a let down.

But the cons are heavily outweighed by the pros...

PROS:
-For film buffs, Bertolucci doesn't dissapoint. The b/w segments intermingled within the storyline are anything short of genius and, for me, was the most beautiful and spellbinding part of this movie.
-For anti-censorship viewers, this movie could seem to be sent from heaven, because it doesn't leave much out.
-The acting is on a par with almost perfection, all three main characters are played flawlessly and completely take on the people they are supposed to evoke... Eva Green is especially amazing.
-The soundtrack is excellent as well. The tone that the music sets is completely appropriate and only adds to the dreamy atomsphere of the film; totally reminiscent of the 60's.
-A perfect representation of Paris in the 60's; eventhough the film's centerpoint is the main characters and their relationship with one another, the artist's home of Europe couldn't be portrayed to be more gorgeous (with the exception of the student riots in foreground).

It is difficult to stop thinking of this movie, even between viewing other movies... if I could i'd give it six stars.

To be of the world or just an extra
Bertolucci's revolutionary film takes place in the tumultous summer of 1968 in which a young American, Matthew (Michael Pitt) has come to Paris to study French. He becames a cinephile and a frequent patron of the Cinemateque Francais, the breeding ground for the New Wave movement. Shortly after the firing of Langlois, he meets fellow cinephiles Isabelle (Eva Green) and Theo (Louis Cassel) and scores an invitation to dinner.

That's how it begins, but this movie isn't linear and it cannot be deciphered merely by the order of events. Quite frankly, I was amazed by Fox Searchlight releasing what may be one of the most revolutionary and sexually progressive films of recent years. In the streets, the young and old found their revolutionary voices in 1968 and fought to institute governmental changes, but inside this chic apartment another revolution is taking place as well only this one involves fewer persons.

Matthew is clearly enamored of Isabelle and Theo (though this latter relationship isn't as developed as in "The Holy Innocents", which I found took away from the storyline) but he is not transfixed by them. He realizes that though they observe the world, they purposely keep themselves outside of it. Theo's father correctly observes early in the movie that to understand the world and change it, you have to become part of it. This is a lesson Matthew is constantly aware of and tries to pass on to his new friends. The first inkling of how grounded he is in this reality comes with the Zippo scene (my favorite) in which his casual observation of how a simple lighter fits into every possible place. Life allows us to fit into many possible spaces as we constantly change and constantly search for the ideal spot, but the cosmic lesson in it is that we will fit into them and consequently, will fit ideally into the one we pick out. We must allow ourselves to inhabit the spaces and become part of them in order to test the waters all the while and we do this by leaving the comfort of our original spot and become part of the overall world.

The sexual relationship between Isabelle and Matthew was passionate, realistic and completely believable. We live in very hypocritical times where nudity has become more taboo than violence and it was a pleasure to see young people making love with all of the intimate gestures that take place between lovers. It obviously takes a great director to pique our cinematic memories and remind us that it takes two nude bodies to make love. The nude scenes between the brother and sister were a bit troublesome to the audience I saw this movie with, but the incestual nature of their relationship in the book has been erased. To me, they just seemed dangerously, asphixiatingly bound to each other, the nudity being just part of said obsession.

All three actors do a fine job, but it takes a brave director to end a film with a police action about to take place to the sounds of Edith Piaf's "Je Ne Regrette Rien". Bertolucci understands his young protagonists and knows the many errors they will continue to commit before they pick and choose what is right and what is wrong because he has been there himself. And he regrets nothing. We should all be so lucky.

An out of place, out of time tribute to youth in the 1960s
I don't know quite what to make of "The Dreamers". How did a movie with the sensibilities of 1968 suddenly show up in 2004? Though beautiful to look at, it seems oddly out of place. What is a movie in this era of `either you are with us or against us' doing here? How dare a movie suggest that, after all is said and done, life isn't a matter of right or wrong, but of shades of grays? And what is this vision of youth, not as a dumbed down, almost quaint part of humanity, but as a vibrant, intelligent force which, by its very essence, begets change? Haven't we gotten past such nonsense?

Matthew [Michael Pitt] is an American exchange student spending a year in Paris to study film. He meets French twins, Isabelle [Eva Green] and Theo [Louis Garrel]. They quickly bond, and, when the siblings' parents leave Paris for a month, Matthew moves into their vast old apartment. Their bonding immediately takes a sexual and virtually incestuous turn. The adventure-seeking but ultimately puritanical Matthew is fascinated by the sensuous and all too worldly twins.

While most of the story takes place inside the apartment, it is set against the French student uprising of 1968. Purportedly, this all began when the founder of the French film institute was fired. It quickly spread and nearly toppled the government. Young people today know little about this event, but, at the time, it was front page news. It was an era of disillusionment both in American and in Europe. The culprits were the Vietnam War and the debate over the value of Communism. People over 30 may have been content to twiddle their thumbs over the problems, but youth certainly was not.

Brilliantly directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, the movie is also an ode to the beauty and power of film. The three young protagonists see everything that is happening around them in cinematic terms. Initially, this insulates them, but as the film progresses, it is their undoing. After all, as powerful as it is, art can only imitate life. It can not BE life.

For thinking [God forbid I say `intellectual'] adult viewers, "The Dreamers" may be a profoundly moving experience. For all others, I can highly recommend the sex scenes - not that thinking people may not enjoy them, too.