"Just because God doesn't exist, that doesn't mean that he can take His place," Theo (Louis Garrel) says at one point in The Dreamers, referring to his father in the other room. It is a funny line, but it is ironic that Theo actually has already found a more suitable replacement, and I am not referring here to his later declaration that "Clapton is God" (nor even to Matthew's [Michael Pitt] retort that "God is a black, left-handed guitarist," meaning Hendrix). The new religion to which Matthew, Theo, and their compliment Isabelle (Eva Green) subscribe is cinema.

Staring up from the front row, agog at Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor, as though beholding the weeping Virgin, our heroes have forsaken the false idols in honor of the one true Cinema. And though it is Bertolucci behind the camera, the man who painted the cinephilic filmmaker played by Jean-Pierre Leaud in Last Tango in Paris as a grand mockery, this film is as swept up in the beauty and power of cinema as the characters.Matthew is an American in Paris during the '68 revolution. He meets twin cinephiles Theo and Isabelle at a protest at the Cinematheque Francaise after Henri Langlois has been fired, and it is love at first sight for Matthew -- with both of them.

When Theo and Isabelle's parents go away, the pampered twins and their ugly American taglong spend most of their time in their apartment, quizzing each other about movies and enjoying each other's company. The consequence of one of these quizzes leads to the inevitable coupling of Eva and Matthew, which results in the scene that is no doubt the key cause of this film getting an NC-17 rating in the States. Not that the scene is as explicit as anything in, say, the still-too-hot-for-US-distribution Ken Park (directed by Larry Clark and Ed Lachman), but one does get the feeling that Bertolucci intentionally tried to "top" the fumbly believability of his famous in-some-circles climactic sex scene from Stealing Beauty.

As with Stealing Beauty and Besieged, The Dreamers is the work of a master filmmaker. Many are tempted to call these films minor works for no reason clear to myself. Certainly the contrivances of plot in some instances of these works are clunky and dopey and any number of other disparaging adjectives, but Bertolucci's sensual and aesthetic judgment is impeccable. The steadicam shots in this film actually gave me the sensation of floating and swirling inside this movie world. His sensitivity to the way people interact remains acute and captivating.

In fact, the only thing for which I would fault him is for perpetuating the already-too-popular-for-its-own-good notion that the best cinema was made thirty-five to forty-five years ago in France. While the revolutions of '68, on screen and off, reverberate to this day, their sound is not all.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002