*POSSIBLE SPOILERS*
If you're bisexual or gay and you don't want to be, this anthem of unashamed nudity is the film for you.
It is of high interest to me at least that in a world where individuality is praised over all else that such conformist filmmaking still exists to the extremes seen in "The Dreamers," especially for such an art house piece. One cannot discount Bertolucci as a filmmaker, his craft is superb and his technique unsurpassed, but his sexual politics are highly questionable.
This is probably the closest I have ever seen a film teeter-totter on the edge of having real bisexual characters, yet carefully making sure to never cross into that "dangerous" and "forbidden" territory. One could say the same about its incestuous brother / sister couple, for he never "entered" her, so technically they didn't really have a sexual relationship, so by this logic they basically weren't really a couple. And Michael Pitt never really did anything with Louis Garrel so basically they were both straight, except that they liked to be naked a lot and take baths with each other, against the "hot" backdrop of the '68 Paris riots. What kind of message is this film sending? That it is okay to lie naked and so intimately close to other members of the same sex just as long as you don't touch them in any way that might be considered sexual? Or that one would go too far by having a brother and sister make out or worse make love on screen? But implying that they do, except actually they don't, is okay instead?
This is very confused filmmaking when dealing with sexual politics and it sends mixed signals; a kind of very strange, conservative, and conformist message to the art house scene. My opinion: if you're going to make a film about a boy that falls in love with a girl and a boy, whether they are brother and sister or not, then make that film. Don't make a film pretending to be a film about a boy that falls in love with a girl and a boy but only makes out with the girl. This is a highly pretentious and cold way of treating a potentially beautiful concept.
Interestingly, the way the sexuality of the three-way relationship was treated mirrors the way the Paris riots where treated, they were utterly glossed over and unreal, they felt like an overtone to a movie about a hopelessly romantic yet sexually mature heterosexual American boy falling in love with a confused little French girl who just happens to live with her weird heterosexual Siamese twin brother. And they all love to sleep naked next to each other. It is unbelievable how a film about love, sex, and the beauty of openness can be so utterly cruel, closed-minded, and conservative. If you like your sex and history the way you like your toast, buttered on one side only, then enjoy this bitter piece of celluloid chocolate.
If you're bisexual or gay and you don't want to be, this anthem of unashamed nudity is the film for you.
It is of high interest to me at least that in a world where individuality is praised over all else that such conformist filmmaking still exists to the extremes seen in "The Dreamers," especially for such an art house piece. One cannot discount Bertolucci as a filmmaker, his craft is superb and his technique unsurpassed, but his sexual politics are highly questionable.
This is probably the closest I have ever seen a film teeter-totter on the edge of having real bisexual characters, yet carefully making sure to never cross into that "dangerous" and "forbidden" territory. One could say the same about its incestuous brother / sister couple, for he never "entered" her, so technically they didn't really have a sexual relationship, so by this logic they basically weren't really a couple. And Michael Pitt never really did anything with Louis Garrel so basically they were both straight, except that they liked to be naked a lot and take baths with each other, against the "hot" backdrop of the '68 Paris riots. What kind of message is this film sending? That it is okay to lie naked and so intimately close to other members of the same sex just as long as you don't touch them in any way that might be considered sexual? Or that one would go too far by having a brother and sister make out or worse make love on screen? But implying that they do, except actually they don't, is okay instead?
This is very confused filmmaking when dealing with sexual politics and it sends mixed signals; a kind of very strange, conservative, and conformist message to the art house scene. My opinion: if you're going to make a film about a boy that falls in love with a girl and a boy, whether they are brother and sister or not, then make that film. Don't make a film pretending to be a film about a boy that falls in love with a girl and a boy but only makes out with the girl. This is a highly pretentious and cold way of treating a potentially beautiful concept.
Interestingly, the way the sexuality of the three-way relationship was treated mirrors the way the Paris riots where treated, they were utterly glossed over and unreal, they felt like an overtone to a movie about a hopelessly romantic yet sexually mature heterosexual American boy falling in love with a confused little French girl who just happens to live with her weird heterosexual Siamese twin brother. And they all love to sleep naked next to each other. It is unbelievable how a film about love, sex, and the beauty of openness can be so utterly cruel, closed-minded, and conservative. If you like your sex and history the way you like your toast, buttered on one side only, then enjoy this bitter piece of celluloid chocolate.