Reviewed by Kunal D'Souza

I HAVE been asked in one of those getting-to-know-you e-mail questionnaires, to name a time and place where I'd like to have lived in, given the choice. Paris, 1968, is almost certainly close to the top of my list.

The Paris of Cahiers du Cinéma, the French new wave, Eustache, Godard, Mai-68 demonstrators and pro-change revolutionaries. When, therefore, I heard about this film, which purported to pay homage to the late 1960s cinema scene in Paris, it was a film decidedly anticipated.


Having seen it, I can safely say there is a special place for a film such as this in my books. While there are few films that I consider 5-star excellent, there are also very few films that I place the 'plainly appalling' category. The Dreamers, alas, stands out as a rare film, in the less complimentary of the aforementioned categories.

I shall take the advice of the management consultants, the class of that noble profession whose scholarship has inspired such programmes as The Office, and attempt to start with the positives of this film, before I proceed to discuss its shortcomings. In this endeavour, I have after some unsuccessful deliberation and consultation, taken the liberty to plagiarize a friend, whose audience this film has also benefited from: "Actually, I didn't like it that much, I only loved Louis Garrel."

So there! That said I can move on to the less positive aspects, or rather the "the opportunities for improvement", if you will.

The script for one was more contrived than desirable. Tediously so, some might venture to say. Allow me to illustrate using an example. The story revolves around the twins of a famous French writer, who form a strange friendship with an American fellow cinéphile. Using this premise, the film attempts to recreate left-bank Paris of 1968. Now, if the point to be made is that the French brother and sister, while espousing communist ideals were in fact, really spoilt, bourgeois kids, this is executed by the American pointing out to the brother, the contradiction in him drinking expensive wine (illustrative of him being bourgeois), while claiming to be a revolutionary. We know that the American's observation is astute, because in the previous scene, the brother speaks of the optimism of the Maoist people's army (he is a revolutionary), and in the scene before, goes down to the cellar and picks out bottles of expensive wine (he drinks expensive wine). We know the wine is expensive because he reads out aloud the labels of the wines, and for the benefit of any spectator unfamiliar with expensive French wines, also the years on the labels of these antiquated bottles, lest there be any doubt in the audiences' minds, as to the calibre of wine to be consumed by the brother, whist making his communist observations, for the notice of the American. And sort of thing, this is characteristic of the entire script.

Subtlety, however remote, it is fair to say is not a prominent feature of this film.

The general content of the film too may be regarded as, to be blunt, superficial. What references can, in the most obvious conceivable terms, convey the message that the characters are cinéastes? Why, surely it is reference to the directors, who while certainly extraordinary in their work, have also had the misfortune of a certain psuedo-intellectual Bertolucci. following.

For the Bande-à-Part reference in the film, the three characters decide to run through the Louvre to break the record set by the trio in that film. A re-enactment of what is probably one of the most famous Godard scenes. While the sister attempts suicide, they drop in the suicide scene from Mouchette. Strangely, they show the second, successful attempt from Mouchette as well, even though the sister in The Dreamers doesn't really go through with the suicide. And I won't go into the Garbo references, as having made my point, I want to refrain from going into a rant, and be victim to criticisms of the same inclination as I make here.

It does not surprise me in the least, that Jean-Pierre Gorin (who was there, in Paris, during the attempted sacking of Henri Langlois), according to a shared acquaintance of ours (if I may, in keeping with the spirit of the film, drop some pretension here), walked out of the film in the first 20 minutes because he couldn't bear to see the nonsense for any longer. He has, for as little as it is worth, my commiserations.