The Dreamers

Coming soon

Drama, art/France/English, French (Japanese subtitles)/115mins
Starring: Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Fox Searchlight Pictures

"I have at last met some real Parisians!" writes Matthew, a young American visiting Paris, to his parents. He doesn’t tell the folks back home that he met them on a political protest and that after being invited to stay with them he has slipped into some decidedly odd ways.
Theo and Isabelle invite Matthew to stay with them at their apartment and he is a tad nonplussed at the frank steaminess of the siblings’ relationship: they sleep naked in the same bed and wander around in permanent undress. But it’s OK, they were conjoined twins and they show him the scars to prove it.
Apart from being odd, the three youngsters are cineastes and when Theo flunks a movie trivia quiz his sister’s punishment for him is to masturbate looking at his favourite picture of Marlene Dietrich. Theo plots a revenge where Isabelle is compelled to have sex with Matt. Now the steaminess turns into a full-fledged semi-incestuous, bisexual ménage á trios. Real Parisians, indeed.
The cute thing is that this is 1968 and French students and workers are on the verge of overthrowing their own government. Rome burns as the three little Neros fiddle with themselves, so to speak. Real events intrude in the form of the odd brick through the window.
In case you haven’t yet guessed, this is Bernardo Bertolucci of Last Tango in Paris fame and this is no mere weirdo porno flick — though you can watch it like that if you like. The Dreamers is lavishly filmed and quotes pretty every other filmmaker of arty note, mostly extensively Godard.
It is a dreamy indulgence in this seminal period of history, and when the three youngsters are not bonking they are idealizing, their philosophy veering between youthful silliness and real revolutionary pragmatism. Posters of Mao jostle with portraits of the stars.
This is Bertolucci, so this is no sentimental trip down memory lane and we see him separating the fluff from the real stuff as the sex games end in the streets, swept away in the protests as if in the tide of history.

Open Range

Coming soon

Western/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/135mins
Starring: Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall, Annette Bening
Director: Kevin Costner
Touchstone

And I thought the western was dead wood.
Open Range, the fourth film and the second western Kevin Costner has directed, harps back to the golden age of this genre and stands out as a remarkably robust and thoughtful film. Costner the director is maturing fast and if he has not yet peaked we are in for some good films down the road.
At the heart of the film is a clash of values — non-violence against violence, the slow old ways against grasping modernity, corporatism against individual liberty and a healthy environment, and so on — but the spartan script is never contrived.
Costner is Charley, a civil war veteran and expert killer, who in the ten years since the war has been disciple and friend to aging cattle man Boss, played by Robert Duvall. Boss is for hard work and against violence and in his shadow Charley has tried to learn new instincts.
Herding their cattle across country Boss and his crew come upon a town run by a rancher played by Michael Gambon who is of the new fence-it–all-in breed and who has a violent hatred of Boss’s kind, who exercise their rights to free grazing on ranchers’ lands. Gambon rather than letting the herders pass through, provokes a confrontation and Boss pragmatically puts away his non-violent instincts and lets Costner off the leash.
The wills of the antagonists clash, a classic showdown is brewing. At no point is violence glorified or seen as the better option.
The violence when it comes at the film’s climax is unsparing and unpleasant, and in a nice touch, rather than standing round and gawping as in most westerns, the town’s inhabitant’s all head for the hills: they know gun play ain’t fun.
Although Charley is the man of action, Costner gives the centre of the film to Duvall who rises to the occasion with a deftly understated performance.
A thoughtful and compelling film that shows the upstarts in the newer genres what script and filmmaking and acting are all about.

Film Reviews: Chris Page

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