Another Bernado Bertolucci movie that tries to document a pivotal moment in history and tell a story of psychosexual drama, I just don’t quite get the Dreamers. The historical setting is Paris in 1968, during student uprisings, and the characters are an American exchange student who hooks up with a brother-sister who seem joined at the hip.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t know enough about Paris in 1968 that the historical angle leaves me cold–a bunch of students marching in the streets and venerating Mao, clashes with police, etc–it’s not clear what they really thought they would achieve, if anything, or if they were just being rebellious and blowing off steam. The movie sort of muddles along for the first three quarters, occasionally punctuated by significant moments, and in the last quarter has several momentous but completely ambiguous moments that leave the audience wondering not only what is happening but why the characters did what they did. The cinematography is quite good, but the content could be condensed down to less than an hour.