 If nothing else, Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” gives us a good idea of what Quentin Tarantino’s erotic fantasies must be like: three people lock themselves in a house for weeks on end quizzing each other about obscure film dialogue, and the losers must perform submissive sex acts. This is the main problem with this interesting but unfocused film: the merry-go-round of flesh palliates the meditations on art and life; the story devolves into “Home Alone” remade by Joe Eszterhas. Clearly this is homage, but to what? The joy of movies or teenage underwear models?
Bertolucci doesn’t seem to know, and at any rate he failed to see that spermy nostalgia is probably the worst way to honor the French New Wave cinema of the Sixties. Francophiles whose DVD collections sport dozens of Criterion and Fox Lorber titles will thrill to the detailed scene-setting and spliced film clips, but the characters’ complete lack of psychological interest mostly renders these inert. There is one culturally revealing scene, however. If you thought the misguided French obsession with Jerry Lewis was an aberration, wait until you see thousands of earnest Gauls proudly marching into the future carrying Soviet flags. |
