THE DREAMERS (2003)  **

Reviewed 2/6/04

Bernardo Bertolucci’s nostalgic but fair-minded look at Paris during the tumultuous spring of 1968.  A prudish American cinephile (Michael Pitt) is adopted by hedonistic, near-incestuous French twins (Eva Green and Louis Garrel) while their parents are away.  They naïvely engage in conversations about movies and politics and play audacious sex games.  The American is the realist while the French are idealists in denial.  The rest is history.  THE DREAMERS is ambitious in trying to fashion an allegory of the times, but gawky and embarrassingly earnest in its execution.  Every theme and idea is presented bluntly with neither nuance nor subtlety.  Worst of all, lead Pitt is completely bland and uninteresting, especially compared to Green’s sultry screen presence and Garrel’s inscrutable intensity.