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The Dreamers (2003)

tomatometer

60

Average Rating: 6.2/10
Reviews Counted: 154
Fresh: 93 | Rotten: 61

Though lushly atmospheric, The Dreamers doesn't engage or provoke as much as it should.

51

Average Rating: 6/10
Critic Reviews: 39
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 19

Though lushly atmospheric, The Dreamers doesn't engage or provoke as much as it should.

audience

77

liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 43,404

My Rating

Movie Info

Veteran Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci directs the erotic drama The Dreamers, adapted from the novel The Holy Innocents: A Romance by Gilbert Adair. American student Matthew (Michael Pitt) is studying in Paris during the politically turbulent late '60s. The story begins in 1968 with the firing of Henri Langlois, the founder of the French Cinémathèque. At a protest demonstration, Matthew meets cinema-obsessed Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother, Theo (Louis Garrel). When their

NC-17, 1 hr. 56 min.

Drama

Gilbert Adair

Jul 13, 2004

$2.3M

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Cast

All Critics (161) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (95) | Rotten (62) | DVD (23)

Exhilarating.

August 7, 2004 Full Review Source: New York Magazine | Comment
New York Magazine
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Swept away by the intensity of the characters' movie debates and sexual games, Bertolucci often recaptures the film-besotted spirit of the period.

March 5, 2004 Full Review Source: Orlando Sentinel | Comment
Orlando Sentinel
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Ambitious and uneven, visceral and pungent.

March 4, 2004 Full Review Source: Dallas Morning News | Comment
Dallas Morning News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A film about youth and passion that seems old and passionless.

February 26, 2004 Full Review Source: New York Observer | Comment
New York Observer
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Its nostalgia and narcissism are ultimately two versions of the same thing, and neither can reopen cross-cultural channels. Instead they keep this story stuck in the past, frozen and intact and irrelevant.

February 20, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It is a well-made film in many ways, but I found in the callowness of these youths nothing to admire.

February 20, 2004 Full Review Source: Houston Chronicle | Comment
Houston Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Legendary director Bernardo Bertolucci ("1900") crafts a return to social revolt in the form of sexual pursuits by a trio of late '60s teenaged students in this engaging yet insufficient movie.

August 27, 2009 Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com | Comment
ColeSmithey.com

Despite the movie's well-earned NC-17, Bertolucci's own ménage à trois favors cinephilia over the related pleasures of politics and sex.

August 21, 2009 Full Review Source: City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul | Comment

It's an amusing, sophisticated movie, true to its times, cheerfully erotic, and played with unselfconscious conviction by its three young actors.

December 7, 2007 Full Review Source: Observer [UK] | Comment
Observer [UK]

The film is at once a celebration of the sexual revolution and a celebration of cinema as the secular equivalent of religion, at a time when movies really mattered.

June 3, 2006 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

Fans of film and gorgeous naked people of either sex will find much here to interest them. But it also has moments that make you want to throw stones.

April 1, 2006 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | Comment
Empire Magazine

A real pleasure.

January 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

The venue for Pitt's marvelous coming-out performance.

May 3, 2005 Full Review Source: Lessons of Darkness | Comment
Lessons of Darkness

...we feel stranded on a soundstage, mummy-wrapped in film studies and bereft of any genuine emotion.

January 8, 2005 Full Review Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Comment
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

It's a hot sequence that nudges the boundary of taste, but still manages to come off more as art than porn.

January 3, 2005 Full Review Source: JWR | Comment

Compelling, but the film's shocking content feels appended rather than intrinsic, and the connection between the movies and real life isn't all there.

December 6, 2004 Full Review Source: F5 (Wichita, KS) | Comment

Maybe the worst thing Bertolucci has done is make a good film that is too blithe to distance itself from the offensively precious one it constantly threatens to be.

August 3, 2004 Full Review Source: Nick's Flick Picks | Comment
Nick's Flick Picks
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for The Dreamers

Wild and ambitious, The Dreamers is a Bernardo Bertolucci masterpiece that candidly declares an erotic affection for cinema with references to Breathless, Band Of Outsiders, and other classics. For cinephiles, The Dreamers is a daring and nostalgic exploration of cinema, sex, and politics with equally daring

October 5, 2011
Jan Marc Macababayao

Super Reviewer

'Strange, beautiful.....and you'll never hear surf music again.' The soundtrack aptly begins and ends with the Hendrix tune, serving both as testament and summary.

April 15, 2008
bookmunki

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Die Träumer (DE)
  • The Dreamers (2004) (UK)
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