Making love and history

The Dreamers
NC-17
Starting tomorrow at Ritz theaters
Three reels out of four

Set in Paris just before the May 1968 student riots, Bernardo Bertolucci’s maddeningly imperfect yet fascinating new film, The Dreamers, is about many things.

It’s about film. It’s about the love of film. It’s about rebellion. It’s about young people left alone to explore their sexuality at a time when much of the world was doing the very same thing. And, last but not least, it’s about two hours long. (Tip your waitress, I’m here all week.)

Loosely based on Gilbert Adair’s 1988 novel The Holy Innocents (and adapted by Adair himself), The Dreamers follows the exploits of three young people.

Matthew (Michael Pitt) is an American student living in Paris for a year. When he meets fraternal twins Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green) at the legendary Cinémathèque Française, the three strike up an immediate friendship.

As the new pals engage in a series of cinematic parlor games, sexual escapades and mind games, the streets of Paris heat up with the scent of rebellion.

Although somewhat slow and self-indulgent, for the most part The Dreamers works. Bertolucci manages to capture the spirit of the ’60s yet avoids making it a reenactment, like so many movies about the period. One of the reasons is that most of the action takes place in an apartment.

The great soundtrack includes songs by Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, but never sounds forced or nostalgic.

The Dreamers catches the spirit of adventurousness more accurately than most movies about the late ’60s. It is very much in the moment.

The film is as much about the love of movies as the time period, and in that respect it also works very well. As Matthew, Theo and Isabelle act out scenes from various films and name their favorite movies, they exhibit a childlike love of cinema that is almost infectious.

Yet this is hardly a perfect film. Bertolucci has been known to be self-indulgent, and does not disappoint here. The Dreamers veers from whimsical to psychosexual intensity without notice and the results are not always smooth. Parents and those with modest sensibilities should be warned: The film does have an NC-17 rating and, although the sex is not exactly explicit, it’s pretty close and does involve the theme of incest.

The Dreamers is very representative of Bertolucci himself. It is sometimes close to brilliant, sometimes quite annoying, but never less than provocative and memorable.

Recommended rental

The Lion King 1 1/2
G
Available Tuesday

If you enjoyed Disney’s The Lion King, you probably remember the comic duo of Timon the meerkat (voiced by Nathan Lane) and Pumbaa the warthog and their signature song, the playful Hakuna Matata. And if so, then you will probably like The Lion King 1 1/2. It’s not so much a sequel as a repositioning of the original through the eyes of Timon and Pumbaa. There are new songs and original dialogue as the two comic sidekicks get their day in the sun and have a chance to comment on the original. Imagine Ebert and Roeper as characters in their own movie and you get the picture. Although no copies were available before release, it’s safe to say this is for hardcore Disney fans, young and old alike.