The Dreamers
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Writer: Gilbert Adair
Based on: his own novel The Holy Innocents
Cast: Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel, Anna Chancellor, Robin Renucci
Seen on: 28.1.2025

Content Note: incest, dubious consent/rape

Plot:
1968. Matthew (Michael Pitt) comes to study in Paris. His great love for the cinema leads him to the twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green) who share his passion. The three connect and the twins invite him to come stay with them while their parents (Anna Chancellor, Robin Rennucci) are out oft own. Matthew, drawn to both of them, gladly accepts. As students protest around the city, the trio withdraws into their own world.

I found The Dreamers so incredibly pretentious that I had a hard time finishing it despite the three beautiful people at its center giving excellent performances.

If I had realized that The Dreamers was a movie by the director who had Marlon Brando movie-rape his co-star Maria Schneider on set, improvising details without any warning or preparation for Schneider, I probably would have skipped it entirely. But I saw the cast and overlooked the director’s name and realization came only after I was done with the film.

This lack of care with consent, though, is also present in The Dreamers as Matthew, Théo and Isabelle engage in a trivia game of dare, basically, that comes with heavy prices when you lose. More often than not, the loser has to do something sexual. Isabelle makes Théo masturbate in front of her and Matthew. Théo makes Matthew take Isabelle’s virginity (because, apparently, inspite of all the insinuations that Théo and Isabelle fuck, they don’t?), effectively raping them both. It’s a clusterfuck (no pun intended) that is dressed up as a romance somehow.

The film obviously wants to provoke, but I felt that it wants to provoke with the fact that Théo and Isabelle are twins much more than with the dubious consent in these games. Matthew’s wide-eyed participation that seems to deny any kind of responsibility in raping Isabelle is hard to take in any case (even though he, too, doesn’t fully consent here), especially given his later „violence is never the answer“ stance.

(As a sidenote, the reaction of the parents when they come home is an absolute head-scratcher, but maybe I’m just too bourgeois by now.)

That the film is riddled with discussions about films and re-enacting of famous movie scenes (of the nouvelle vague, mostly, unfortunately not my movement) reminded me also of this particular kind of enervating fandom that never really engages with the material it is a fan of, never really questions what any of it means. Instead it’s all about competing. What is better? Who knows more obscure facts about it? Who is the best fan? It was all surpremely annoying.

Summarizing: Absolutely and not in the slightest for me.