The Dreamers
Official Selection of London Film Festival/ Venice Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival/ Hong Kong International Film Festival

Synopsis

Left alone in Paris whilst their parents are on holiday, Isabelle (Eva Green) and her brother Theo (Louis Garrel) invite fellow student Matthew (Michael Pitt), a young American, to stay at their apartment. Here they make their own rules as they experiment with each otherâs emotions and sexuality, playing a series of increasingly demanding mind games. Set against the turbulent political backdrop of France in Spring 1968, when the voice of youth was reverberating around Europe, THE DREAMERS is a story of self-discovery as the three students test one another to see just how far they each will go.

Q&A with BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI

This is a very intimate film for you, in terms of the characters involved. Can you tell me how you first came across the idea?

I read Gilbert Adair's book a few years ago, maybe eight or nine years ago, and I liked it very much. It was during a time when I was wondering about doing a third act of 1900. The second act ends in 1945, and I wanted it to go on until the end of the century. And then I thought of doing a movie about '68. But then I thought, ÎLet's be real. What was behind 1900 ? There was a big political hope· and there isn't any more.' So I gave up, but then '68 came back to me after reading Gilbert's book. I mean, there's not so much [in his novel] about the events of '68 ö the riots and the violence ö it's more about the spirit of the moment. I guess you could say it's a banal thing to say, but one of the great, real, true banalities in reality is that young people have incredible hopes. They are looking at the future like somebody who can dream in epic terms, in a grand, Utopian way. But youth is not allowed to have those kinds of dreams. And to have so much hope ö for what? To get more money than their parents? So to go back to the movie, there are these three kids who meet when Henri Langlois is fired from the Cinematheque. They're all film buffs ö ã dur et pur ä, as they say ö and cinema is the thing that puts them together. Because their parents are going away to the countryside for a while, the French brother and sister invite their American friend to stay with them and they get involved in kind of an enfants terribles relationship·

What does Paris mean to you? Is Paris a place that is close to you?

First of all, I'm a film buff. I was completely in love with the Nouvelle Vague when I was 19, 20, and Paris was the mythical, legendary place when the Nouvelle Vague was conceiving its movies. I love French cinema. Maybe it's the fact that I come from Parma, which was under the French for a long time. In Parma they have the Îaaah' sound in their language, like the French, and they use French words· It's some kind of DNA. So I love French cinema, and when I came to do THE CONFORMIST [1970], which was shot part in Rome and part in Paris, I was thinking a lot about the French cinema of the '30s: Carné, Renoir and Vigo. I remember a few years ago when every magazine in the world was celebrating 100 years of cinema. It was in 1997 and they were all doing lists, and in general my number one was THE RULES OF THE GAME.

When did you first come to Paris and what did you encounter when you got here?

I came here after I did my A levels when I was 18. My parents gave me some money, I came with my cousin, who was the same age, and I discovered a place called La Cinematheque Française, which I'd read about. And there was this movie called A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, which had just come out, and it changed the destiny of cinema, in a way, and the history of cinema. When I made my second film, BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, in 1962, and it went to Cannes, the Italian critics in general refused to acknowledge it, but Cahiers Du Cinema and many French magazines were wonderful to me. They kind of adopted it.


Where did you live in the '60s?

In the '60s I was very much in Rome and Paris, then London. I stopped living in Paris after LAST TANGO IN PARIS, which is where I met Claire [Peploe], my wife. And then there was a moment in the '80s where I really couldn't see myself doing a movie in Italy because· I don't know· you could smell the corruption somehow. There was this very cynical attitude that I didn't like, and then the corruption exploded later.

I understand that you did a lot of research into the documentation of the time. How much of The Dreamers is your Paris?

I'm not doing a truly historical film, in the sense that I want the spirit of '68 but I'm not looking for a reconstruction. I think that stopped me for a while from being committed to ö and engaged with ö this film. I didn't want to have extras wearing police uniforms pretending to beat extras wearing students' clothes. I'm so much about the present. But I understood that the film was also about three kids of today ö Michael Pitt, Eva Green and Louis Garrel ö confronting three kids of '68. And they know nothing of '68. The whole of youth knows nothing about '68. It's like there's been a big censorship of that spirit. I think it's completely mad . Because even if it was a failure of revolutionary dreams, '68 was incredibly important for the change it made in people's behaviour. Everything changed. In Italy, people were fined for kissing in the streets! And these modern kids who are taking for granted their so-called freedom don't know that a lot of that was conquered in '68. So it's interesting to see how those kids are facing those times. Even if it's not said, it's between the lines. It's an emotion that will come out on screen.

Is The Dreamers your first time shoot in Paris since Last Tango?

Yes.

Is it possible to think of Paris without thinking of the Nouvelle Vague?

Nouvelle Vague, but also before that. And yet, and still, Nouvelle Vague still exists. It's something that is not just past, and something that remains important for cinema. I mean, there is the cinema before and after the Nouvelle Vague.

But Paris is such an iconic city. It's so evocative of A Bout De Souffle·

There is a line where one of the kids says, ãWhere were you born?ä The other one says, ãOn the Champs Elysees.ä And then you see Jean Seberg, saying, ãNew York Herald Tribune!ä Like a kind of song! I asked Godard to use two seconds from BANDE A PART and a couple of seconds from A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, and he said, ãYou can do what you want. There are no rights of the auteur, only duties.ä

That's somewhat true of your films, though ö you do treat the past almost as another character.

In a way, yeah. But the only way to do a film about the past ö for me, at least ö is to do it as if the past was where we actually live at the moment. Because when you shoot, the reality, the people, the landscape, the faces and the bodies in front of your camera, even if they're dressed up in period costumes, they are in the present, they are contemporary to you as you are shooting them. And the only verb the camera knows how to conjugate is the present.


Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Starring

-- Michael Pitt
-- Eva Green
-- Louis Garrel
-- Robin Renucci
-- Anna Chancellor
-- Florian Cadiou

Distribution: Golden Scene Company Limited

Release date: 10 June, 2004

Line up:
Cine Art / AMC / Golden Gateway / UA-Pacific Place / Broadway Cinematheque

Category: III

Running Time: 116 mins

Website: http://www.the-dreamers.com