Bernardo Bertolucci’s Nc-17 masterpiece “The Dreamers” is receiving a 4K restoration re-release to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The film made history as the first Fox Searchlight Nc-17 theatrical release in 2004, with then-president Peter Rice comparing “The Dreamers” to Bertolucci’s other infamously controversial film, “Last Tango in Paris.”
Bertolucci said at the time that “The Dreamers” being released stateside in its original cut was a relief, adding, “After all, an orgasm is better than a bomb.”
“The Dreamers” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2003 and had its U.S. debut at Sundance 2004. Future Bond cast member Eva Green made her credited big screen debut (after a bit part in “The Piano Teacher”) with the erotic psychological drama following a trio of cinephile students in 1968 Paris during the riots. Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel co-starred alongside Green.
The newly-restored version of the feature does not yet have a U.
Bertolucci said at the time that “The Dreamers” being released stateside in its original cut was a relief, adding, “After all, an orgasm is better than a bomb.”
“The Dreamers” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2003 and had its U.S. debut at Sundance 2004. Future Bond cast member Eva Green made her credited big screen debut (after a bit part in “The Piano Teacher”) with the erotic psychological drama following a trio of cinephile students in 1968 Paris during the riots. Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel co-starred alongside Green.
The newly-restored version of the feature does not yet have a U.
- 3/29/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Restored in 4K for its 20th anniversary last year, Bernardo Bertolucci’s penultimate feature The Dreamers is now arriving on a new 4K Uhd disc this summer. Marking Eva Green’s first film role, the romantic drama set during the 1968 Paris student riots also stars Michael Pitt and Louis Garrel. While a U.S. release has not been unveiled yet, the region-free 4K Uhd set featuring the restoration completed by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna under the supervision of director of photography, Fabio Cianchetti, will debut in the UK on May 13.
Here’s the synopsis:
The Dreamers is set in Paris, Spring of 1968: the city is beginning to emerge from hibernation and an obscure spirit of social and political renewal is in the air. Yet Théo, his twin sister Isabelle and Matthew, an American student they have befriended, think only of immersing themselves in another, addictive form of hibernation: moviegoing at the Cinémathèque Française.
Here’s the synopsis:
The Dreamers is set in Paris, Spring of 1968: the city is beginning to emerge from hibernation and an obscure spirit of social and political renewal is in the air. Yet Théo, his twin sister Isabelle and Matthew, an American student they have befriended, think only of immersing themselves in another, addictive form of hibernation: moviegoing at the Cinémathèque Française.
- 3/29/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Literary ambition, motherhood and a quietly strained marriage appear in the sweet, soft focus home movies of French author Annie Ernaux
Annie Ernaux ascended to a new plane of international prominence with last year’s Nobel prize for literature and the 2021 Venice Golden Lion for Audrey Diwan’s movie version of her novel Happening. Now here is a diverting, if minor footnote to her life; with her grownup son David Ernaux-Briot she has curated this presentation of her family’s Super 8 home movies from the early 70s to the early 80s. In this period she was raising two young children and semi-secretly embarking on a literary career whose growing success would put strain on her marriage, although this is one of many things she does not discuss in detail.
The 1970s were a boom time for 8mm home movies, encouraging a whole generation to think of their childhoods as having...
Annie Ernaux ascended to a new plane of international prominence with last year’s Nobel prize for literature and the 2021 Venice Golden Lion for Audrey Diwan’s movie version of her novel Happening. Now here is a diverting, if minor footnote to her life; with her grownup son David Ernaux-Briot she has curated this presentation of her family’s Super 8 home movies from the early 70s to the early 80s. In this period she was raising two young children and semi-secretly embarking on a literary career whose growing success would put strain on her marriage, although this is one of many things she does not discuss in detail.
The 1970s were a boom time for 8mm home movies, encouraging a whole generation to think of their childhoods as having...
- 6/20/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
From the horse’s head in The Godfather to the smell of napalm in Apocalypse Now, no one does chilling menace like the 91-year-old Oscar-winner. With the release this month of his new film, we rate his greatest roles
A pretty odd and atypical role for Duvall in which he was perhaps not well cast. He plays a Brit, Dr Watson, sidekick to Nicol Williamson’s legendary detective Sherlock Holmes in this non-canonical fan fiction tale (a genre that critic Gilbert Adair called “shlock Holmes”). Watson is convinced that Holmes is suffering cocaine-induced delusions (due to ingesting his “7 solution”), takes him to see Sigmund Freud – and they wind up solving a case.
A pretty odd and atypical role for Duvall in which he was perhaps not well cast. He plays a Brit, Dr Watson, sidekick to Nicol Williamson’s legendary detective Sherlock Holmes in this non-canonical fan fiction tale (a genre that critic Gilbert Adair called “shlock Holmes”). Watson is convinced that Holmes is suffering cocaine-induced delusions (due to ingesting his “7 solution”), takes him to see Sigmund Freud – and they wind up solving a case.
- 12/8/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Brian Cox plays a retired actor as pensioners dance in pyjamas and a care assistant deploys Shakespeare
The indomitable Brian Cox goes gangbusters at a role that doesn’t really deserve the effort he puts into it. He plays Sir Michael Gifford, a legend of the stage and screen and formidable, temperamental luvvie, now made even more cantankerous by the indignities of ageing. His daughter hires Dorottya (Coco König), a Hungarian care assistant who wins his affection by judiciously deploying Shakespeare quotes along with the adult diapers.
This is the kind of film that signposts its storyline from pretty much the opening shot (pensioners dancing in pyjamas to the kind of chummy trad jazz favoured by Woody Allen). And for all the admirable elements in the cast – Anna Chancellor is engaging as Sir Michael’s besotted housekeeper – and crackles of wit in the screenplay, co-written by the late Gilbert Adair,...
The indomitable Brian Cox goes gangbusters at a role that doesn’t really deserve the effort he puts into it. He plays Sir Michael Gifford, a legend of the stage and screen and formidable, temperamental luvvie, now made even more cantankerous by the indignities of ageing. His daughter hires Dorottya (Coco König), a Hungarian care assistant who wins his affection by judiciously deploying Shakespeare quotes along with the adult diapers.
This is the kind of film that signposts its storyline from pretty much the opening shot (pensioners dancing in pyjamas to the kind of chummy trad jazz favoured by Woody Allen). And for all the admirable elements in the cast – Anna Chancellor is engaging as Sir Michael’s besotted housekeeper – and crackles of wit in the screenplay, co-written by the late Gilbert Adair,...
- 8/7/2016
- by Wendy Ide
- The Guardian - Film News
Cox’s adorable grump learns to laugh again in a British film with witty touches from co-writer Gilbert Adair, and only a faint taste of Werther’s Original
Those with unhappy memories of Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet, that sucrose vision of sweet old British thesps in a nursing home, might flinch at this. Brian Cox plays Sir Michael Gifford, an adorably grumpy old Shakespearian actor with the beginnings of Parkinson’s, who makes life hell for his family and nursing staff. But his new home care assistant is Dorottya (Coco König), a cheeky young Hungarian drama student who makes him laugh and reminds him of his younger self. A touching odd-couple friendship commences, which exasperates Sir Michael’s daughter, Sophia (Emilia Fox), and his secretary and former lover, Milly (Anna Chancellor), who are suspicious and maybe a little envious of this new relationship.
This film looks like it’s going...
Those with unhappy memories of Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet, that sucrose vision of sweet old British thesps in a nursing home, might flinch at this. Brian Cox plays Sir Michael Gifford, an adorably grumpy old Shakespearian actor with the beginnings of Parkinson’s, who makes life hell for his family and nursing staff. But his new home care assistant is Dorottya (Coco König), a cheeky young Hungarian drama student who makes him laugh and reminds him of his younger self. A touching odd-couple friendship commences, which exasperates Sir Michael’s daughter, Sophia (Emilia Fox), and his secretary and former lover, Milly (Anna Chancellor), who are suspicious and maybe a little envious of this new relationship.
This film looks like it’s going...
- 8/4/2016
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★★☆ Gilbert Adair began the first chapter of Flickers (1995), his deeply personal and often eccentric odyssey into the history of the movies - written to mark the centenary of the Lumière brothers' public exhibition of short films shot and projected on their Cinematographe device in Paris's Grand Café Boulevard des Capucines in 1895 - with a grandiose "Let there be light!". It is a mark of cinema's uniqueness as an art form, that it can be so fittingly compared to such a momentous and mystical occasion as the Big Bang. Adair's wonderful book, mixing selected film stills (one for each year) and textual analysis, kicks off with a Lumière short, known as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory.
- 6/30/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Exclusive: Drama heads to shoot, The Yellow Affair to sell at Efm.
Brian Cox, Emilia Fox, Anna Chancellor and newcomer Coco König will star in The Carer, which is set to begin shoot in the UK later this month.
The Yellow Affair will present the English-language drama, directed by Janos Edelenyi, at Berlin’s European Film Market (Efm) (Feb 5-13).
The Carer is the last film scripted by the late Gilbert Adair,screenwriter of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, and was co-written by the director and long time Adair collaborator, Tom Kinninmont.
Cox will play an ageing star of stage and screen who forms an unlikely relationship with his immigrant carer.
Producers are Jozsef Berger of Mythberg Films (Hungary), Steve Bowden of Vita Nova Films (UK), Charlotte Wontner of Hopscotch Films (UK), and Kai Künnemann of A-Company (Germany).
Cox said of the film: “One of the central strengths of the movie is the comic creation of character...
Brian Cox, Emilia Fox, Anna Chancellor and newcomer Coco König will star in The Carer, which is set to begin shoot in the UK later this month.
The Yellow Affair will present the English-language drama, directed by Janos Edelenyi, at Berlin’s European Film Market (Efm) (Feb 5-13).
The Carer is the last film scripted by the late Gilbert Adair,screenwriter of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, and was co-written by the director and long time Adair collaborator, Tom Kinninmont.
Cox will play an ageing star of stage and screen who forms an unlikely relationship with his immigrant carer.
Producers are Jozsef Berger of Mythberg Films (Hungary), Steve Bowden of Vita Nova Films (UK), Charlotte Wontner of Hopscotch Films (UK), and Kai Künnemann of A-Company (Germany).
Cox said of the film: “One of the central strengths of the movie is the comic creation of character...
- 2/5/2015
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
François Truffaut was a big fan of Luis Buñuel films; he had always admired him as one of the greatest auteurs of cinema and in fact they managed to meet each other many times, starting in 1953. But before talking about their meetings, let’s see what Truffaut has said and written about Buñuel.
In his book The Films in My Life, Truffaut wrote: “Luis Buñuel is, perhaps, somewhere between Renoir and Bergman. One would gather that Buñuel finds mankind imbecilic but life diverting. All this he tells us very mildly, even a bit indirectly, but it's there in the overall impression we get from his films.”1
Truffaut also met Buñuel in 1957 when he and Jacques Rivette were doing a series of interviews. In addition to that interview request letter, Truffaut wrote letters, or at least one, to him dated 1963 and closed it as follow:
“I have heard from Jeanne Moreau...
In his book The Films in My Life, Truffaut wrote: “Luis Buñuel is, perhaps, somewhere between Renoir and Bergman. One would gather that Buñuel finds mankind imbecilic but life diverting. All this he tells us very mildly, even a bit indirectly, but it's there in the overall impression we get from his films.”1
Truffaut also met Buñuel in 1957 when he and Jacques Rivette were doing a series of interviews. In addition to that interview request letter, Truffaut wrote letters, or at least one, to him dated 1963 and closed it as follow:
“I have heard from Jeanne Moreau...
- 10/28/2014
- by Hossein Eidizadeh
- MUBI
Influential figure in Clint Eastwood's career who directed Magnum Force and Hang 'em High
It is no exaggeration to declare that the film and television director Ted Post, who has died aged 95, contributed greatly to the making of Clint Eastwood into a Hollywood superstar. When Eastwood returned to the Us from Europe, where he had starred in three Sergio Leone "spaghetti" westerns, Post directed him in Hang 'em High (1968), which consolidated Eastwood's screen persona as the impassive, laconic, gun-for-hire loner. A few years later, Post directed Eastwood again, in Magnum Force (1973), the first Dirty Harry sequel, which outdid Don Siegel's original film commercially. Eastwood said that Leone, Siegel and Post were the three most influential directors in his career.
In 1959, the unknown Eastwood – who had appeared in bit parts in 11 films – moved to CBS for his first leading role, as the amiable fresh-faced sidekick Rowdy Yates, in the television western series Rawhide.
It is no exaggeration to declare that the film and television director Ted Post, who has died aged 95, contributed greatly to the making of Clint Eastwood into a Hollywood superstar. When Eastwood returned to the Us from Europe, where he had starred in three Sergio Leone "spaghetti" westerns, Post directed him in Hang 'em High (1968), which consolidated Eastwood's screen persona as the impassive, laconic, gun-for-hire loner. A few years later, Post directed Eastwood again, in Magnum Force (1973), the first Dirty Harry sequel, which outdid Don Siegel's original film commercially. Eastwood said that Leone, Siegel and Post were the three most influential directors in his career.
In 1959, the unknown Eastwood – who had appeared in bit parts in 11 films – moved to CBS for his first leading role, as the amiable fresh-faced sidekick Rowdy Yates, in the television western series Rawhide.
- 8/25/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Figure 1: The 400 Blows.
"In my view, the concept [the move] does not refer to the literal, physical movements of either the performers or the camera (although it can include these elements). It does not necessarily involve powerfully dramatic (or comic) large-scale alterations in plot. It does not have to entail any grand-slam subversion of social, ideological or cultural conventions. But something, in a filmic move, will indeed have to shift, perhaps gently, but tellingly so."
—Adrian Martin (2010: 23) [my emphasis]
Before being frozen, framed and immortalized in the static final shot of Les quatre cents coups (1959), Antoine Doinel undergoes its antithesis—a sequence of camera movements that re-frames, follows and foregrounds his actions. Escaping the juvenile delinquent centre, the character runs on a rugged country road, the destination of which neither he nor we know; the camera tracks the dash laterally in a medium shot. Visualizing his exuberance, Antoine performs a childlike half-run,...
"In my view, the concept [the move] does not refer to the literal, physical movements of either the performers or the camera (although it can include these elements). It does not necessarily involve powerfully dramatic (or comic) large-scale alterations in plot. It does not have to entail any grand-slam subversion of social, ideological or cultural conventions. But something, in a filmic move, will indeed have to shift, perhaps gently, but tellingly so."
—Adrian Martin (2010: 23) [my emphasis]
Before being frozen, framed and immortalized in the static final shot of Les quatre cents coups (1959), Antoine Doinel undergoes its antithesis—a sequence of camera movements that re-frames, follows and foregrounds his actions. Escaping the juvenile delinquent centre, the character runs on a rugged country road, the destination of which neither he nor we know; the camera tracks the dash laterally in a medium shot. Visualizing his exuberance, Antoine performs a childlike half-run,...
- 12/23/2012
- by Hoi Lun Law
- MUBI
Argentinian director whose films drew heavily on the stories of Jorge Luis Borges
Although the Argentinian director and screenwriter Eduardo de Gregorio, who has died aged 70, had lived in Paris since 1970, his work was always identifiably South American. This can be attributed to the overpowering influence of the labyrinthine stories of Jorge Luis Borges on a generation of South American artists.
De Gregorio brought this Borgesian aura to bear on the five features he directed, and on the screenplays he wrote with Jacques Rivette and Bernardo Bertolucci. In fact, for the latter's The Spider's Stratagem (1970), De Gregorio adapted the Borges story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, smoothly transposing it from Ireland to Italy. It was an elaborate piece of Oedipal plotting in which, revisiting the village in the Po valley where his father was murdered in 1936, a young man discovers that his father was not a hero, but a traitor.
Although the Argentinian director and screenwriter Eduardo de Gregorio, who has died aged 70, had lived in Paris since 1970, his work was always identifiably South American. This can be attributed to the overpowering influence of the labyrinthine stories of Jorge Luis Borges on a generation of South American artists.
De Gregorio brought this Borgesian aura to bear on the five features he directed, and on the screenplays he wrote with Jacques Rivette and Bernardo Bertolucci. In fact, for the latter's The Spider's Stratagem (1970), De Gregorio adapted the Borges story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, smoothly transposing it from Ireland to Italy. It was an elaborate piece of Oedipal plotting in which, revisiting the village in the Po valley where his father was murdered in 1936, a young man discovers that his father was not a hero, but a traitor.
- 10/19/2012
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
"Me and You" is the most inessential movie ever directed by the legendary Bernardo Bertolucci. It's also an entirely serviceable coming of age story, capably performed by its two leads and emotionally affecting within the constraints of its small scale aims. The filmmaker's first Italian language movie in 30 years avoids making any bold statements or indulging in advanced formalism in favor of a trim but well-acted drama. Adapting Gilbert Adair's novel, the story involves 14-year-old Lorenzo (Jacobo Olmo Antinori), a disaffected teen who tells his mother he's going on a ski trip and sneaks into the basement to throw a private party for himself. When the shindig is inadvertently crashed by his drug-addicted older sister (Tea Falco), the duo spend the next few days hanging out, listening to music and talking about life. Naturally, Lorenzo experiences a window into young adulthood by watching his troubled relative moan about her vices.
- 9/7/2012
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
All the latest news from the Croisette, as Brad Pitt's new movie Killing Them Softly makes its debut
10.47am: Good morning and welcome to the latest Cannes liveblog. I'm ripping back the reins from Andrew Pulver as he gets the train down to the south of France, where he'll grab the baton (or, perhaps, just a baguette) from me and I'll fly home.
I'm back in the press room, which is currently humming with slightly inelegant excitement as Brad Pitt is about to walk past, on his journey from the Killing them Softly photocall to the press conference.
10.52am: The film itself is a blood-lust-tastic crime thriller set in 2008 round New Orleans. Directed by Andrew Dominik, with whom Pitt teamed up for The Assassination of Jesse James by Robert Ford the Coward, it's a tale of sweaty crooks and desperate junkies, cracked codes of honour and the primacy of cash.
10.47am: Good morning and welcome to the latest Cannes liveblog. I'm ripping back the reins from Andrew Pulver as he gets the train down to the south of France, where he'll grab the baton (or, perhaps, just a baguette) from me and I'll fly home.
I'm back in the press room, which is currently humming with slightly inelegant excitement as Brad Pitt is about to walk past, on his journey from the Killing them Softly photocall to the press conference.
10.52am: The film itself is a blood-lust-tastic crime thriller set in 2008 round New Orleans. Directed by Andrew Dominik, with whom Pitt teamed up for The Assassination of Jesse James by Robert Ford the Coward, it's a tale of sweaty crooks and desperate junkies, cracked codes of honour and the primacy of cash.
- 5/22/2012
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
Bernardo Bertolucci shows Cannes he's still a force to be reckoned with via this slight but intimate and charged two-hander
The spirit of the new wave is revived (albeit in apolitical form) by the 72-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci in his new film, a slight but engaging two-hander showing out of competition in Cannes. It's an intimate, disorientating and highly charged encounter between a young man and an older woman, who find themselves having to share a cramped basement flat which they cannot leave for one week. There are resonances with the director's The Dreamers, his adaptation of Gilbert Adair's novel, and perhaps even with Last Tango In Paris.
Lorenzo, played by Jacopo Olmo Antinori, is a disturbed 14-year-old boy who hates school, and whose mother Arianna (Sonia Bergamasco) sends him to a psychotherapist. Mother and son lunch together at restaurants, where Lorenzo speculates, inappropriately, as to whether other people there think they are a couple,...
The spirit of the new wave is revived (albeit in apolitical form) by the 72-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci in his new film, a slight but engaging two-hander showing out of competition in Cannes. It's an intimate, disorientating and highly charged encounter between a young man and an older woman, who find themselves having to share a cramped basement flat which they cannot leave for one week. There are resonances with the director's The Dreamers, his adaptation of Gilbert Adair's novel, and perhaps even with Last Tango In Paris.
Lorenzo, played by Jacopo Olmo Antinori, is a disturbed 14-year-old boy who hates school, and whose mother Arianna (Sonia Bergamasco) sends him to a psychotherapist. Mother and son lunch together at restaurants, where Lorenzo speculates, inappropriately, as to whether other people there think they are a couple,...
- 5/22/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
"The agony and perverse ecstasy of unrequited love permeate Terence Davies's The Deep Blue Sea," writes Graham Fuller at the top of his interview with the director. Also in the new March/April 2012 issue of Film Comment: Jonathan Rosenbaum remembers Gilbert Adair (plus a few online exclusives: Adair on Mae West and his "Cliché Expert's Guide to the Cinema"), Anton Dolin examines "The Strange Case of Russian Maverick Aleksei German" (see, too, J Hoberman's 1990 piece for Fc on German) and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life tops the Reader's "20 Best Films of 2011" Poll — plus comments.
Then there are the shorter bits from the issue online: Nicolas Rapold on Pablo Giorgelli's Las Acacias and Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (more from Eric Hynes [Time Out New York, 4/5], Eric Kohn [indieWIRE], Anthony Lane [New Yorker], Dennis Lim [New York Times], Karina Longworth [Voice], Henry Stewart [L] and Michael Tully [Hammer to Nail]), Phillip Lopate on Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb's This Is Not a Film...
Then there are the shorter bits from the issue online: Nicolas Rapold on Pablo Giorgelli's Las Acacias and Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (more from Eric Hynes [Time Out New York, 4/5], Eric Kohn [indieWIRE], Anthony Lane [New Yorker], Dennis Lim [New York Times], Karina Longworth [Voice], Henry Stewart [L] and Michael Tully [Hammer to Nail]), Phillip Lopate on Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb's This Is Not a Film...
- 3/7/2012
- MUBI
If François Truffaut hadn’t been taken from us in 1984, at the age of 52, he would have turned 80 last Monday. At one point he had said that his goal was to make thirty films and then retire to write books. At the time of his death he had made twenty-five.
I recently came across this poster for the American release of Truffaut’s first film, Les quatre cent coups and was struck not only by its lurid and rather innaccurate tagline—"Angel Faces hell-bent for violence"—but also by the fact that it refuses to capitalize on the one thing that made the film such a success: namely the face of Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel. In the poster Léaud’s angel face is barely seen. Doinel’s parents, played by Albert Remy and Claire Maurier (misspelled in the credits), are more prominent, while Doinel seems like one of a number of undistinguished schoolboys.
I recently came across this poster for the American release of Truffaut’s first film, Les quatre cent coups and was struck not only by its lurid and rather innaccurate tagline—"Angel Faces hell-bent for violence"—but also by the fact that it refuses to capitalize on the one thing that made the film such a success: namely the face of Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel. In the poster Léaud’s angel face is barely seen. Doinel’s parents, played by Albert Remy and Claire Maurier (misspelled in the credits), are more prominent, while Doinel seems like one of a number of undistinguished schoolboys.
- 2/10/2012
- MUBI
Robert Bresson: The Over-Plenty of Life is a series we've been running in conjunction with the complete retrospective of Bresson's work that'll be touring North America through May. I thought I'd supplement Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's essays, Daniel Kasman's observations and Adrian Curry's collection of posters with a roundup of pointers to pieces on Bresson that have appeared over the past month or two. One of the occasions of the series, as I mentioned in the entry on the initial announcement (with its basic schedule of cities and dates) is the publication of an expanded and illustrated edition of series curator James Quandt's collection, Robert Bresson (Revised), so let's open this go round with notes on another book, Tony Pipolo's Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film. Jonathan Rosenbaum's posted his review for the Summer 2010 issue of Cineaste, in which he calls it…
one of the most careful and...
one of the most careful and...
- 2/7/2012
- MUBI
William Friedkin's 1975 interview with Fritz Lang
If you happen to be in the market for Fritz Lang Christmas ornaments, they do exist, though they don't come cheaply. At any rate, much of the third issue of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism (the successor to Movie, the print journal Ian Cameron edited from 1962 to 2000) is given to the second part of its Fritz Lang dossier featuring — and I should mention before you start clicking that these are PDFs — Stella Bruzzi on Fury (1936), Vf Perkins on You Only Live Once (1937), Edward Gallafent on The Return of Frank James (1940), Adrian Martin on Scarlet Street (1945), Peter William Evans on The Big Heat (1953), Deborah Thomas on Human Desire (1954) and Peter Benson on Moonfleet (1955).
Also in this issue: Christian Keathley on Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Alex Clayton on Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake and John Gibbs on Jamie Thraves's...
If you happen to be in the market for Fritz Lang Christmas ornaments, they do exist, though they don't come cheaply. At any rate, much of the third issue of Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism (the successor to Movie, the print journal Ian Cameron edited from 1962 to 2000) is given to the second part of its Fritz Lang dossier featuring — and I should mention before you start clicking that these are PDFs — Stella Bruzzi on Fury (1936), Vf Perkins on You Only Live Once (1937), Edward Gallafent on The Return of Frank James (1940), Adrian Martin on Scarlet Street (1945), Peter William Evans on The Big Heat (1953), Deborah Thomas on Human Desire (1954) and Peter Benson on Moonfleet (1955).
Also in this issue: Christian Keathley on Otto Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Alex Clayton on Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake and John Gibbs on Jamie Thraves's...
- 12/24/2011
- MUBI
Sherlock Holmes is transformed into a man of action in Guy Ritchie's latest reimagining of the Victorian sleuth
A crippled veteran, returning to London from Afghanistan and forced to live on a small pension, finds a flatmate who turns out to be a drug addict. They become close friends and this other man eventually tells the ex-soldier that Britain is heading for disaster but will emerge "a cleaner, better, stronger land" and suggests they rush to the bank to cash a cheque before its signatory reneges. The subject of this highly topical story is, as you've probably guessed, Dr John H Watson, narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He's well played by Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's second Holmes movie as a sensible, intelligent, reliable chap, even if he too readily explodes or expostulates when confronted by his flatmate's outrageous behaviour.
But while the film's art director and...
A crippled veteran, returning to London from Afghanistan and forced to live on a small pension, finds a flatmate who turns out to be a drug addict. They become close friends and this other man eventually tells the ex-soldier that Britain is heading for disaster but will emerge "a cleaner, better, stronger land" and suggests they rush to the bank to cash a cheque before its signatory reneges. The subject of this highly topical story is, as you've probably guessed, Dr John H Watson, narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He's well played by Jude Law in Guy Ritchie's second Holmes movie as a sensible, intelligent, reliable chap, even if he too readily explodes or expostulates when confronted by his flatmate's outrageous behaviour.
But while the film's art director and...
- 12/18/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
"Gilbert Adair, the acclaimed critic who had some of his own novels turned into successful films, has died aged 66," reports Catherine Shoard in the Guardian. "Adair won the respect of cineastes with volumes such as A Night at the Pictures (1985), Myths & Memories (1986), Hollywood's Vietnam (1981), Flickers (1995), Surfing the Zeitgeist (1997) and with his translation of the letters of François Truffaut (published in 1990). He was a prolific journalist, writing a regular column for the Sunday Times in the 1990s, as well as for this paper — last year he interviewed the French filmmaker Alain Resnais."
As a screenwriter, Adair will be remembered for his collaborations with Raúl Ruiz (The Territory in 1981, Klimt in 2006, Blind Revenge in 2010) and Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers in 2003, based on his own novel, The Holy Innocents). Richard Kwietniowski's Love and Death on Long Island (1997) is based on Adair's novel.
In January 2010, Adair wrote in the Guardian, "I yield to...
As a screenwriter, Adair will be remembered for his collaborations with Raúl Ruiz (The Territory in 1981, Klimt in 2006, Blind Revenge in 2010) and Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers in 2003, based on his own novel, The Holy Innocents). Richard Kwietniowski's Love and Death on Long Island (1997) is based on Adair's novel.
In January 2010, Adair wrote in the Guardian, "I yield to...
- 12/11/2011
- MUBI
Witty, self-deprecating writer with a passion for cinema whose work shone 'like sparklers in the autumn gloom'
In Gilbert Adair's And Then There Was No One (2009), the third of his pastiches of Agatha Christie's detective stories, a writer called Gilbert Adair is lacerated thus by a reader: "The point, Gilbert, is that you've always been such a narcissistic writer. Which is why you've never had the popular touch … Postmodernism is dead … Nobody gives two hoots about self-referentiality any longer, just as nobody gives two hoots, or even a single hoot, about you. Your books are out of sight, out of sound, out of fashion and out of print."
Such self-referential gambits have exasperated some readers, but in Adair's staunchly postmodern, self-deprecating hands, the manoeuvre was disarming. Adair, who has died aged 66 of a brain haemorrhage, had often enjoyed playfully rehearsing his own literary erasure. In the 1990s he...
In Gilbert Adair's And Then There Was No One (2009), the third of his pastiches of Agatha Christie's detective stories, a writer called Gilbert Adair is lacerated thus by a reader: "The point, Gilbert, is that you've always been such a narcissistic writer. Which is why you've never had the popular touch … Postmodernism is dead … Nobody gives two hoots about self-referentiality any longer, just as nobody gives two hoots, or even a single hoot, about you. Your books are out of sight, out of sound, out of fashion and out of print."
Such self-referential gambits have exasperated some readers, but in Adair's staunchly postmodern, self-deprecating hands, the manoeuvre was disarming. Adair, who has died aged 66 of a brain haemorrhage, had often enjoyed playfully rehearsing his own literary erasure. In the 1990s he...
- 12/10/2011
- by Stuart Jeffries, Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
In another era, Gilbert Adair would have written on Herodotus. As it was he focused his energies on an exciting young medium
Gilbert Adair was a unique and wonderful writer: a critic of elegance, brilliance, and unquenchable intellectual energy and curiosity. He combined the roles of cinephile and man of letters in a unique way, as well being a novelist, screenwriter, translator and pasticheur. His final works were a series of detective story spoofs, satirical and wittily observed variants on Agatha Christie entitled The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, A Mysterious Affair of Style and And Then There Was No One. These contrivances were treasured and eagerly awaited by his fans, and they demonstrated both a storyteller's gusto and a theorist's interest in narrator reliability and point of view. His 1992 novel The Death of the Author, a droll twist on Roland Barthes, is another example.
I personally met Adair just a...
Gilbert Adair was a unique and wonderful writer: a critic of elegance, brilliance, and unquenchable intellectual energy and curiosity. He combined the roles of cinephile and man of letters in a unique way, as well being a novelist, screenwriter, translator and pasticheur. His final works were a series of detective story spoofs, satirical and wittily observed variants on Agatha Christie entitled The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, A Mysterious Affair of Style and And Then There Was No One. These contrivances were treasured and eagerly awaited by his fans, and they demonstrated both a storyteller's gusto and a theorist's interest in narrator reliability and point of view. His 1992 novel The Death of the Author, a droll twist on Roland Barthes, is another example.
I personally met Adair just a...
- 12/9/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Prolific journalist and author whose novels were often adapted for the big screen, has died
Gilbert Adair, the acclaimed critic who had some of his own novels turned into successful films, has died aged 66.
Adair won the respect of cineastes with volumes such as A Night at the Pictures (1985), Myths & Memories (1986), Hollywood's Vietnam (1981), Flickers (1995), Surfing the Zeitgeist (1997) and with his translation of the letters of François Truffaut (published in 1990). He was a prolific journalist, writing a regular column for the Sunday Times in the 1990s, as well as for this paper – last year he interviewed the French film-maker Alain Resnais.
It was in cinematic adaptation that he found wider fame: the 1997 film Love and Death on Long Island, starring John Hurt as mordant writer Giles De'Ath, and Jason Priestley as the teen star he strikes up a friendship with, was based on Adair's 1990 novel of the same name.
Bernardo Bertolucci's successful 2003 film The Dreamers,...
Gilbert Adair, the acclaimed critic who had some of his own novels turned into successful films, has died aged 66.
Adair won the respect of cineastes with volumes such as A Night at the Pictures (1985), Myths & Memories (1986), Hollywood's Vietnam (1981), Flickers (1995), Surfing the Zeitgeist (1997) and with his translation of the letters of François Truffaut (published in 1990). He was a prolific journalist, writing a regular column for the Sunday Times in the 1990s, as well as for this paper – last year he interviewed the French film-maker Alain Resnais.
It was in cinematic adaptation that he found wider fame: the 1997 film Love and Death on Long Island, starring John Hurt as mordant writer Giles De'Ath, and Jason Priestley as the teen star he strikes up a friendship with, was based on Adair's 1990 novel of the same name.
Bernardo Bertolucci's successful 2003 film The Dreamers,...
- 12/9/2011
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
An ambitious attempt to write a 'personal' history of cinema is sometimes intelligent but rarely convincing
Maxim Gorky, the first major writer to record his impressions of the cinema, wrote in his local newspaper the day after seeing the first Lumière brothers show in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896: "Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If you only knew how strange it is to be there … I was at Aumont's and saw Lumière's cinématographe – moving photography. The extraordinary impression it creates is so unique and complex that I doubt my ability to describe it with all its nuances." A few years later Rudyard Kipling wrote Mrs Bathurst, the first significant work of fiction inspired by the movies, a mysteriously haunting tale of a sailor driven to his death by a brief newsreel he obsessively views in Cape Town. The new medium had the power to disturb, to fascinate,...
Maxim Gorky, the first major writer to record his impressions of the cinema, wrote in his local newspaper the day after seeing the first Lumière brothers show in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896: "Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If you only knew how strange it is to be there … I was at Aumont's and saw Lumière's cinématographe – moving photography. The extraordinary impression it creates is so unique and complex that I doubt my ability to describe it with all its nuances." A few years later Rudyard Kipling wrote Mrs Bathurst, the first significant work of fiction inspired by the movies, a mysteriously haunting tale of a sailor driven to his death by a brief newsreel he obsessively views in Cape Town. The new medium had the power to disturb, to fascinate,...
- 10/15/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
This staggering artistic montage telling the time in film and TV clips will run on in your thoughts
This week, very late to the party, I visited Christian Marclay's staggering moving-image installation The Clock, a 24-hour montage of thousands of film and television clips with glimpses of clocks, watches, and snatches of people saying what time it is. This incredible installation is set up so that whatever time is shown is, in fact, the correct time as of that instant. So as well as providing food for thought about the nature of time in the cinema, and indeed in life itself, the whole thing itself functions as a gigantic and gloriously impractical clock. By the time you read this, it may be possible to get The Clock as a streaming-video app to download to your iPhone, automatically putting itself in sync with your time setting.
The Clock is now...
This week, very late to the party, I visited Christian Marclay's staggering moving-image installation The Clock, a 24-hour montage of thousands of film and television clips with glimpses of clocks, watches, and snatches of people saying what time it is. This incredible installation is set up so that whatever time is shown is, in fact, the correct time as of that instant. So as well as providing food for thought about the nature of time in the cinema, and indeed in life itself, the whole thing itself functions as a gigantic and gloriously impractical clock. By the time you read this, it may be possible to get The Clock as a streaming-video app to download to your iPhone, automatically putting itself in sync with your time setting.
The Clock is now...
- 4/7/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Boorman in conversation at the Irish Film Institute. (Photo copyright John Exshaw. All rights reserved.)
By John Exshaw
While the Irish Film Institute’s recently concluded French Film Festival (18-28 November) provided a number of interesting divertissements for those seeking a respite, if not deliverance, from the seemingly endless catalogue of corruption, cronyism, clerical criminality, and chronic incompetence that has engulfed the country in recent times, the highlight of the programme for the discerning cinéaste was undoubtedly the joint appearance on Sunday 21st. of director John Boorman and eminent French film critic, Michel Ciment, for a Q&A session following the screening of Phillipe Pilard’s 2009 documentary, John Boorman: Portrait.
Boorman, of course, is that relatively rara avis, a British auteur, one whose body of work (or oeuvre, as they like to say in France) has tended, as is often the way, to command greater respect abroad than at home.
By John Exshaw
While the Irish Film Institute’s recently concluded French Film Festival (18-28 November) provided a number of interesting divertissements for those seeking a respite, if not deliverance, from the seemingly endless catalogue of corruption, cronyism, clerical criminality, and chronic incompetence that has engulfed the country in recent times, the highlight of the programme for the discerning cinéaste was undoubtedly the joint appearance on Sunday 21st. of director John Boorman and eminent French film critic, Michel Ciment, for a Q&A session following the screening of Phillipe Pilard’s 2009 documentary, John Boorman: Portrait.
Boorman, of course, is that relatively rara avis, a British auteur, one whose body of work (or oeuvre, as they like to say in France) has tended, as is often the way, to command greater respect abroad than at home.
- 12/6/2010
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Kelly Reichardt and Pablo Larraín were the two stand-out directors at a surprisingly stimulating and enjoyable festival
My time at the Venice film festival has now come to an end – I hand over to Xan Brooks – and I'm leaving with a sense that this festival is actually much better than it had been cracked up to be, with an interesting, lively competition list and if not masterpieces exactly, then some real and pleasurable surprises.
Two films stand out, in particular. Meek's Cutoff by Kelly Reichardt was an eerie and disturbing film, a western, of sorts, and a bleak one. It's a film which has something of The Searchers in its DNA, and could also be compared to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, and there are even sense-memories of the children's pioneer classic Little House on the Prairie, although in much grimmer form. In its severity and gloom...
My time at the Venice film festival has now come to an end – I hand over to Xan Brooks – and I'm leaving with a sense that this festival is actually much better than it had been cracked up to be, with an interesting, lively competition list and if not masterpieces exactly, then some real and pleasurable surprises.
Two films stand out, in particular. Meek's Cutoff by Kelly Reichardt was an eerie and disturbing film, a western, of sorts, and a bleak one. It's a film which has something of The Searchers in its DNA, and could also be compared to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, and there are even sense-memories of the children's pioneer classic Little House on the Prairie, although in much grimmer form. In its severity and gloom...
- 9/6/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
He used to tackle big issues: Hiroshima, the Algerian war. But Alain Resnais's latest film is about the theft of a wallet. The director tells Gilbert Adair why
Old age is always faintly unnerving. Although, at 88, Alain Resnais isn't by any means the most venerable of active film-makers, it's still hard to credit that the film I've come to Paris to talk to him about – Wild Grass, an authentic surrealist romance, as far from being geriatric in style as it's possible to imagine – was made by this elegant, eloquent gentleman sitting opposite me at the Hôtel Claridge, near the Champs Elysées.
I last met Resnais a couple of decades ago, and he has remained much as I remembered: the superb mane of snow-white hair, flaming red shirt, tightly knotted black tie and trademark white trainers. All that's missing is a viewfinder dangling on his pullover, as nonchalantly as a monocle.
Old age is always faintly unnerving. Although, at 88, Alain Resnais isn't by any means the most venerable of active film-makers, it's still hard to credit that the film I've come to Paris to talk to him about – Wild Grass, an authentic surrealist romance, as far from being geriatric in style as it's possible to imagine – was made by this elegant, eloquent gentleman sitting opposite me at the Hôtel Claridge, near the Champs Elysées.
I last met Resnais a couple of decades ago, and he has remained much as I remembered: the superb mane of snow-white hair, flaming red shirt, tightly knotted black tie and trademark white trainers. All that's missing is a viewfinder dangling on his pullover, as nonchalantly as a monocle.
- 6/22/2010
- by Gilbert Adair
- The Guardian - Film News
London, Mar 4 – Daryl Hannah, who is nearing 50, has bared all in her new film ‘A Closed Book’.
The ‘Kill Bill’ actress stars as the assistant of a blind writer, played by Tom Conti, in the psychological thriller.
Her character becomes Conti’s eyes as he recollects his past for his autobiography, reports the Sun.
The film has been written by Gilbert Adair and directed by Raoul Ruiz. (Ani)...
The ‘Kill Bill’ actress stars as the assistant of a blind writer, played by Tom Conti, in the psychological thriller.
Her character becomes Conti’s eyes as he recollects his past for his autobiography, reports the Sun.
The film has been written by Gilbert Adair and directed by Raoul Ruiz. (Ani)...
- 3/4/2010
- by News
- RealBollywood.com
Tom Conti and Daryl Hannah star in this ludic thriller with as many twists and turns as Sleuth
Adapted by Gilbert Adair from his witty 1999 novel, A Closed Book is a ludic thriller in the manner of Sleuth, but far superior to the recent remake of the Anthony Shaffer play scripted by Harold Pinter and starring Michael Caine and Jude Law. Tom Conti plays Paul, a rich, witty, peremptory writer and art historian recently blinded in a driving accident in Thailand, who hires Jane Ryder (Daryl Hannah), an American banker and former painter, to help write his autobiography. In the book the amanuensis is male, and Paul lives in a Cotswolds cottage rather than a mansion that resembles Knebworth House (indeed it is Knebworth House), and the erotic thrust is now more ambiguous.
Jane is not of course all she appears to be, but to say more would be to spoil the considerable fun.
Adapted by Gilbert Adair from his witty 1999 novel, A Closed Book is a ludic thriller in the manner of Sleuth, but far superior to the recent remake of the Anthony Shaffer play scripted by Harold Pinter and starring Michael Caine and Jude Law. Tom Conti plays Paul, a rich, witty, peremptory writer and art historian recently blinded in a driving accident in Thailand, who hires Jane Ryder (Daryl Hannah), an American banker and former painter, to help write his autobiography. In the book the amanuensis is male, and Paul lives in a Cotswolds cottage rather than a mansion that resembles Knebworth House (indeed it is Knebworth House), and the erotic thrust is now more ambiguous.
Jane is not of course all she appears to be, but to say more would be to spoil the considerable fun.
- 2/21/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Raoul Ruiz goes all Hammer horror – to no great effect – in a silly story about a blind art critic, writes Xan Brooks
Eccentric Chilean director Raoul Ruiz has rifled through the Hammer bag of horror tricks and come up with a relentlessly silly, oddly diverting yarn about a blind art critic (Tom Conti) and his malign personal assistant (Daryl Hannah). A crash zoom alerts us to the fact that Conti has no eyes in his head! Spinning overhead shots mean that someone is panicking! Gilbert Adair's script keeps us in the dark until the final moments when – hey presto - the curtains are yanked back and the light breaks through. And wouldn't you know it? The big reveal is just a cheap, dull shimmer.
Rating: 2/5
ThrillerXan Brooks
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds...
Eccentric Chilean director Raoul Ruiz has rifled through the Hammer bag of horror tricks and come up with a relentlessly silly, oddly diverting yarn about a blind art critic (Tom Conti) and his malign personal assistant (Daryl Hannah). A crash zoom alerts us to the fact that Conti has no eyes in his head! Spinning overhead shots mean that someone is panicking! Gilbert Adair's script keeps us in the dark until the final moments when – hey presto - the curtains are yanked back and the light breaks through. And wouldn't you know it? The big reveal is just a cheap, dull shimmer.
Rating: 2/5
ThrillerXan Brooks
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds...
- 2/18/2010
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
He made poignant, sensual films about first love and chance encounters. But it was the dialogue that made the late Eric Rohmer's movies magical, says Gilbert Adair
Who says that the cinema is not in a state of terminal infantilism? Consider the case of the French filmmaker Eric Rohmer, who died on Monday at the age of 89. It's a sobering thought that My Night With Maud, the work that established his international reputation all of 40 years ago – a cerebral comedy about a pious young Catholic intellectual and a flirtatious, free-thinking bourgeoise, who spend an unconsummated night together mostly discussing Pascalian theology – was a huge popular hit in its day, and not only in France. Nowadays, if My Night With Maud were made at all, it would almost certainly be marginalised, by critics and public alike, as an avant-gardist, even downright experimental, film, with an audience to match.
During those intervening four decades,...
Who says that the cinema is not in a state of terminal infantilism? Consider the case of the French filmmaker Eric Rohmer, who died on Monday at the age of 89. It's a sobering thought that My Night With Maud, the work that established his international reputation all of 40 years ago – a cerebral comedy about a pious young Catholic intellectual and a flirtatious, free-thinking bourgeoise, who spend an unconsummated night together mostly discussing Pascalian theology – was a huge popular hit in its day, and not only in France. Nowadays, if My Night With Maud were made at all, it would almost certainly be marginalised, by critics and public alike, as an avant-gardist, even downright experimental, film, with an audience to match.
During those intervening four decades,...
- 1/14/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
He got his big break playing Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and now, 34 years later, John Hurt is at it again
There's something disturbing about John Hurt. That familiar Mount Rushmore face seems to have ironed itself out. It was once compared to a komodo dragon – even his lines seemed to have lines – but today he looks peachy as a schoolboy. You've been on the Botox, haven't you? He roars with how-dare-you laughter. "Nah! Hahahaha! No. Don't say that. That would be awful. Not in a million years would I do that." He's got a point: take away the cracks and creases, and his job prospects would diminish no end. His face is one of the most distinctive in the movies. Almost as distinctive as his voice, dripping with honey and acid, often at the same time. Look, he admits, there might well be a reason for his...
There's something disturbing about John Hurt. That familiar Mount Rushmore face seems to have ironed itself out. It was once compared to a komodo dragon – even his lines seemed to have lines – but today he looks peachy as a schoolboy. You've been on the Botox, haven't you? He roars with how-dare-you laughter. "Nah! Hahahaha! No. Don't say that. That would be awful. Not in a million years would I do that." He's got a point: take away the cracks and creases, and his job prospects would diminish no end. His face is one of the most distinctive in the movies. Almost as distinctive as his voice, dripping with honey and acid, often at the same time. Look, he admits, there might well be a reason for his...
- 11/21/2009
- The Guardian - Film News
MADRID -- Matt Dillon and Max von Sydow will each receive Donostia lifetime achievement awards, while Nick Broomfield's Ghosts will open the 54th San Sebastian International Film Festival's Official Section and Todd Robinson's Lonely Hearts will close it, festival organizers announced Friday. Jeanne Moreau will chair the jury for the official Competition, which will award the top prize, the noncash Golden Shell. She will be joined by Brazilian filmmaker Bruno Barreto, Spanish director Isabel Coixet, surrealist helmer Sara Driver, Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, Spanish director Manuel Gomez Pereira and Portuguese literary luminary Jose Saramago. Patricia Reyes Spindola will preside over the new directors jury, and will be joined by Gilbert Adair, Carlos Losilla, Susana de Moraes, Per Nielsen, Martine Offroy and Kirmen Uribe. The jury will award the Altadis-New Directors prize worth 90,000 ($114,000).
Screened
Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- With its equal-opportunity full-frontal nudity, frank portrayal of human sexuality and unabashed depiction of brother-sister incest, it is difficult to see this latest film from Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci receiving anything but an NC-17 rating, which will drastically reduce boxoffice potential. Those viewers who have no quarrel with the graphic images may well scratch their heads and wonder just what the director of such revered, if controversial, works as Last Tango in Paris and The Conformist thought he was communicating with this story of three young people living in Paris during the spring of 1968. Certainly his avowed intention of creating a film that captures the unbridled spirit of the era -- when political, cultural and moral boundaries were being stretched and redefined -- seems undercut by the particular story he chooses to tell. Based on Gilbert Adair's 1988 novel The Holy Innocents, this film can expect strong numbers in a few select urban areas but wash out everywhere else. Overseas boxoffice should be better, reflecting the less puritanical attitudes of Europeans.
Left alone in their Paris apartment while their parents go on a month's vacation, 19-ish twins Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (newcomer Eva Green) invite a young American student they have just met, 20-year-old Matthew (Michael Pitt) to move in with them. All three are passionate about cinema (they meet at the Cinematheque Francaise) and continually test one another's knowledge of films. They also indulge in sexual and mind games, pushing to see how far the other will go.
Matthew, raised in a typically middle-class American suburban home, is uncomfortable with how physically and sexually uninhibited the siblings are with each other and increasingly troubled by their close emotional and sexual bond. Completely smitten with the beautiful Isabelle, however, he eventually enters into their games while still cautioning them about what he considers their unnatural relationship.
While the three are holed up in the apartment, the streets of Paris are erupting outside. Peaceful protests, which begin when the government fires Henri Langlois as director of the cinematheque, prove to be the precursor of violent political riots in May. Theo mouths revolutionary rhetoric but, as Matthew points out, if he really believed, he'd be out there with the protesters.
Tensions inside the apartment rise as Theo and Matthew compete for Isabelle's attention, and Isabelle battles her own conflicts concerning her romantic feelings toward her brother. The trio's moral and emotional regression is mirrored in their neglect of their physical surroundings, which turns into a pigsty. The sense of escalating decay recalls Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles.
Certainly the director brings in many other film references by intercutting the action with actual clips from some of the characters' favorite movies, including Queen Christina, Blonde Venus, Band-a-Part and Top Hat. Characters are always quoting and acting out scenes from these movies, and the film easily could be considered a valentine to cinema were it not for the unusual subject matter that surrounds it.
Politically and historically, spring 1968 marked a momentous turning point throughout Europe as political dissent spilled into the streets and the younger generation found new expression in a melding of art, cinema, politics, rock 'n' roll, philosophy and drugs. But if Bertolucci is trying to capture that spirit of rebellion, experimentation and hope, he picks the wrong story. The protesters hoped to transform society for the better. Theo and Isabelle are narcissists without commitment to anything outside themselves.
The music in the film is terrific, the best 1968 had to offer: Janis Joplin, the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. In her screen debut, Green will undoubtedly be the talk of the film. An extraordinary beauty, she has the overripe sexiness, melancholy and destructive air of a young Jeanne Moreau. She even looks like Moreau, albeit with more delicate features. Her acting also is impressive
she and Garrel share a remarkable sense of ease and emotional intimacy that proves 100% believable. The appropriately sullen Garrel proves uninteresting overall, however. Pitt acquits himself well.
The Dreamers' perverse subject matter will no doubt raise objections, but the film's real failure is that neither the story nor the characters capture the zeitgeist that Bertolucci theoretically set out to celebrate.
THE DREAMERS
Fox Searchlight Pictures
A Recorded Picture Company, Peninsular Films, Fiction Co-Production
Credits:
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Screenwriter: Gilbert Adair, based on his novel The Holy Innocents
Producer: Jeremy Thomas
Director of photography: Fabio Cianchetti
Production designer: Jean Rabasse
Co-producer: John Bernard
Costume designer: Louise Stjernsward
Editor: Jacopo Quadri
Cast:
Matthew: Michael Pitt
Isabelle: Eva Green
Theo: Louis Garrel
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- With its equal-opportunity full-frontal nudity, frank portrayal of human sexuality and unabashed depiction of brother-sister incest, it is difficult to see this latest film from Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci receiving anything but an NC-17 rating, which will drastically reduce boxoffice potential. Those viewers who have no quarrel with the graphic images may well scratch their heads and wonder just what the director of such revered, if controversial, works as Last Tango in Paris and The Conformist thought he was communicating with this story of three young people living in Paris during the spring of 1968. Certainly his avowed intention of creating a film that captures the unbridled spirit of the era -- when political, cultural and moral boundaries were being stretched and redefined -- seems undercut by the particular story he chooses to tell. Based on Gilbert Adair's 1988 novel The Holy Innocents, this film can expect strong numbers in a few select urban areas but wash out everywhere else. Overseas boxoffice should be better, reflecting the less puritanical attitudes of Europeans.
Left alone in their Paris apartment while their parents go on a month's vacation, 19-ish twins Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (newcomer Eva Green) invite a young American student they have just met, 20-year-old Matthew (Michael Pitt) to move in with them. All three are passionate about cinema (they meet at the Cinematheque Francaise) and continually test one another's knowledge of films. They also indulge in sexual and mind games, pushing to see how far the other will go.
Matthew, raised in a typically middle-class American suburban home, is uncomfortable with how physically and sexually uninhibited the siblings are with each other and increasingly troubled by their close emotional and sexual bond. Completely smitten with the beautiful Isabelle, however, he eventually enters into their games while still cautioning them about what he considers their unnatural relationship.
While the three are holed up in the apartment, the streets of Paris are erupting outside. Peaceful protests, which begin when the government fires Henri Langlois as director of the cinematheque, prove to be the precursor of violent political riots in May. Theo mouths revolutionary rhetoric but, as Matthew points out, if he really believed, he'd be out there with the protesters.
Tensions inside the apartment rise as Theo and Matthew compete for Isabelle's attention, and Isabelle battles her own conflicts concerning her romantic feelings toward her brother. The trio's moral and emotional regression is mirrored in their neglect of their physical surroundings, which turns into a pigsty. The sense of escalating decay recalls Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles.
Certainly the director brings in many other film references by intercutting the action with actual clips from some of the characters' favorite movies, including Queen Christina, Blonde Venus, Band-a-Part and Top Hat. Characters are always quoting and acting out scenes from these movies, and the film easily could be considered a valentine to cinema were it not for the unusual subject matter that surrounds it.
Politically and historically, spring 1968 marked a momentous turning point throughout Europe as political dissent spilled into the streets and the younger generation found new expression in a melding of art, cinema, politics, rock 'n' roll, philosophy and drugs. But if Bertolucci is trying to capture that spirit of rebellion, experimentation and hope, he picks the wrong story. The protesters hoped to transform society for the better. Theo and Isabelle are narcissists without commitment to anything outside themselves.
The music in the film is terrific, the best 1968 had to offer: Janis Joplin, the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. In her screen debut, Green will undoubtedly be the talk of the film. An extraordinary beauty, she has the overripe sexiness, melancholy and destructive air of a young Jeanne Moreau. She even looks like Moreau, albeit with more delicate features. Her acting also is impressive
she and Garrel share a remarkable sense of ease and emotional intimacy that proves 100% believable. The appropriately sullen Garrel proves uninteresting overall, however. Pitt acquits himself well.
The Dreamers' perverse subject matter will no doubt raise objections, but the film's real failure is that neither the story nor the characters capture the zeitgeist that Bertolucci theoretically set out to celebrate.
THE DREAMERS
Fox Searchlight Pictures
A Recorded Picture Company, Peninsular Films, Fiction Co-Production
Credits:
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Screenwriter: Gilbert Adair, based on his novel The Holy Innocents
Producer: Jeremy Thomas
Director of photography: Fabio Cianchetti
Production designer: Jean Rabasse
Co-producer: John Bernard
Costume designer: Louise Stjernsward
Editor: Jacopo Quadri
Cast:
Matthew: Michael Pitt
Isabelle: Eva Green
Theo: Louis Garrel
Running time -- 118 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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