Sexually charged THE DREAMERS is part of complete Bertolucci retrospective at MoMA
THE DREAMERS (Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, December 29, 6:30
Wednesday, January 12, 4:00
Series continues through January 12
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.the-dreamers.com
Bernardo Bertolucci’s sexiopolitical look at Paris in the tumultuous year of 1968 focuses on three individuals: Matthew (DAWSON CREEK’s Michael Pitt), a shy American studying in France; Theo (Louis Garrel), a cigarette-smoking oh-so-French moody lad; and Isabelle (Eva Green), Theo’s “twin” who likes to walk around naked and flirt with both Matthew and Theo. The trio acts out scenes from films, plays dangerously erotic games, and drinks a lot of wine as the outside world comes crashing down around them. This is Bertolucci’s third film set in Paris, following THE CONFORMIST (1970) and LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972), and it’s another winner. Green is mesmerizing in her film debut, Pitt reveals that he has few shortcomings, and the NC-17 rating is sure to attract an interesting crowd. Look for a cameo appearance by Jean-Pierre Leaud playing himself. THE DREAMERS is part of MoMA’s complete retrospective of the career of Bernardo Bertolucci, four weeks of classic films that include such upcoming screenings as LAST TANGO IN PARIS, LITTLE BUDDHA, THE SPIDER’S STRATAGEM, THE LAST EMPEROR, THE GRIM REAPER, 1900, BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, STEALING BEAUTY, OIL, and TRAGEDY OF A RIDICULOUS MAN.
Olivier Assayas pays homage to François Truffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT in this piece of pseudoartistic fluff about a film crew’s attempts at remaking Louis Feuillade’s 1915 classic LES VAMPIRES. The great Maggie Cheung, who later married and divorced Assayas, is wasted as the star of the remake, and Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Léaud, playing the director, is frustratingly unintelligible when he speaks in English, which unfortunately is a lot in this high-falutin’ mess. The film is being shown as part of “Post–Punk Auteur: Olivier Assayas,” consisting of seventeen films by the French writer-director, continuing through October 28.
Jean-Pierre Léaud gives a bravura performance in Jean Eustache’s New Wave classic about love and sex in Paris following the May 1968 cultural revolution. Léaud stars as Alexandre, a jobless, dour flaneur who rambles on endlessly about politics, cinema, music, literature, sex, women’s lib, and lemonade while living with current lover Marie (Bernadette Lafont), obsessing over former lover Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), and starting an affair with new lover Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), a quiet nurse with a rather open sexual nature. The film’s three-and-a-half-hour length will actually fly by as you become immersed in the complex characters, the fascinating dialogue, and the excellent acting. Much of the movie consists of long takes in which Alexandre shares his warped view of life and art in small, enclosed spaces, the static camera focusing either on him or his companion. The film is screening on May 3 as part of the Neue Galerie’s Battlefields film series, featuring works involving soldiers in WWI, in conjunction with the current exhibit focusing on World War I veteran Otto Dix. The series concludes May 10 with Albert and Allen Hughes’s FROM HELL, starring Johnny Depp.