The Dreamers

It feels like an insult to call The Dreamers movie, it's a film, and a Bernardo Bertolucci film (who won an Oscar in 1988 for The Last Emperor). And I also feel ashamed it took me so long to see this true piece of art.

We follow the story of Matthew, it's 1968, and he's an American student in Paris. He doesn't know anybody, but his passion for the French cinema takes him to the Cinemateque every day, where he joins other cinephiles as they call themselves, and watch films, good, bad, old and new, and always sitting as close to the screen as possible, so they could be the first in the theatre to feel the scenes.
He soon forms a friendship with Isabelle and Theo, French twins who are cinephiles like him, and they're also devoted to politics, with Bertolucci re-enacting the student revolution of the times, as the Cinemateque was being closed by the government.
There's also erotism (at times via explicit sex), as the young friends share their passion for cinema, their sexual awakening, and love. I really loved the games they played, when someone would perform a scene of a film, and the other two then have to guess the name of the film, or they would be penalized, usually having to do some sexual act. But Bertolucci makes the scenes performed more special, as he shows us images of the actual film they're performing, usually from the 30s, 40s and 50s, wonderful films I'm afraid I'll never get to see.

The performances are excellent. I knew Michael Pitt from Larry Clark's also sexually charged Bullit, and he was good again in Murder by Numbers, before being wasted last year in The Village. But he's amazing here.
The French twins are Eva Green, a newcomer who had only worked in theatre before, and Louis Garrel, son of Director Phillippe Garrel, an old friend of Bertolucci's. They're both so good here, with Eva Green being a true discovery. She's so strong and sexy, and at times so vulnerable and fragile, specially after one of the first sexual scenes.
The three actors have an amazing chemistry, and you can see the passion and love in their faces.

Don't be turned off by the sex and nudity (and watch the director's true vision which is NC-17, don't waste it going for the R-Rated version), Bertolucci loves cinema, and he's giving us this true masterpiece, a must see for anyone who calls himself a film lover, a cinephile.