"The Dreamers"

The tensions that exist in this ménage can't help breaking the surface, because these kids live in a constant state of self-dramatization. When Isabelle says she entered the world in 1959, the year that Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" was released, she's saying that life didn't exist for her before the emergence of the nouvelle vague. The statement is funny because it's both true and showily self-aware. She's like a movie star delivering a line she knows will tickle her audience. Later, in one of the most startling shots, Isabelle appears in a blackened doorway, swathed below the waist in a sheet, her arms hidden in long black gloves, to become the Venus de Milo. It's a moment of great triumph for her -- turning herself into a work of art. Every role Isabelle and Theo try on is derived from the movies. They carry those images in their heads and can't resist emulating them. When Theo declaims Mao's famous remark that a revolution is not a dinner party, Bertolucci wittily frames him in front of the poster of Godard's "La Chinoise" showing Juliet Berto peeking out from behind a fort constructed of copies of Mao's little red book. Revolutionary is simply another part for Theo to play and, luckily for a movie fanatic living in Paris in 1968, one that's very chic.

At times the movie plays like a comedy of manners about the meeting between European decadence and American innocence. Matthew might almost be the movie's Daisy Miller. He's capable of being shocked, but he's not so much of a naif he's unable to protect himself. He's both drawn to Isabelle and Theo's world and able to sense what's suffocating about it. He's aware of the privilege they take for granted, and his own privilege as well. When Theo goes off on a rant about American soldiers in Vietnam, Matthew informs him that not every young American male is as lucky as he was to obtain a student deferment. Theo rather grandly proclaims that he would rather go to jail than kill people -- an easy statement for someone who doesn't have to face the draft. And when Matthew tries to dissuade Theo from hurling a Molotov cocktail at a squad of riot police, it's because he associates violence with pain. All Theo can see is himself in the role of revolutionary. Like Isabelle appearing to have chained herself to the gates of the closed Cinémathèque when she's really just wrapped the dangling chains around her wrist, Theo leaves himself the possibility of a Houdini escape when the next pose that suits him comes along. But, as themselves, they are already playing the greatest roles they will ever have.

The movie references here come thick and fast, and not just in the clips that act as pointillist illustrations of the trio's reenactments. Watching the three walk down a staircase by the river at night may remind you of the trio in "Jules and Jim" doing the same thing. And Matthew's funny and surprising dinner-table speech before his friends' astonished parents (Robin Renucci and Anna Chancellor), a reflection on a Zippo lighter as a symbol of cosmic unity, plays like Bertolucci's version of the scene in Godard's "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," where a cup of coffee is made to stand for the cosmos. When Matthew insists on taking Isabelle out for a real date -- they share a Coke at a cafe while Françoise Hardy's "Tous les garcons et les filles" plays in the background, then neck in the back row at a showing of "The Girl Can't Help It" -- the scene plays like both a parody of the movie version of '50s teenage romance and a distillation of its sweet essence.

Movie heritage is also present in Bertolucci's casting. Louis Garrel is the son of French filmmaker Philippe Garrel, and Eva Green is the niece of Marika Green, the star of Bresson's "Pickpocket." Garrel's Theo comes off as a bit too much of a Euro-brooder. He would have been better served if he were given more chances to poke fun at Theo.

Green is, I think, phenomenal, though her performance may strike some (wrongly) as overacting. Although she has appeared in a couple of Paris stage productions, this is her first movie, and starting out with Bertolucci must have been both exhilarating and terrifying for her. What she's doing here is almost reckless in its daring -- Green is an untested actress attempting not so much a stylized performance but a performance that aims to get at the core of a creature who stylizes herself. She has the type of sullen beauty that seems made for a movie camera (when you see her in a beret with a smoldering pink Sobranie dangling from her lips, you want to laugh and applaud at the rightness of it). The flicker of pride in how she presents her figure, both slim and voluptuous, for our delectation is not only assured for a young actress but integral to the character.

It's unfortunate that Bertolucci intercuts Green playing out a scene from "Queen Christina" with clips from the movie itself. The inclusion is perhaps necessary for the audience to know what's going on, but comparing a first-time actress to Garbo is a burden no one could carry off (though she acquits herself with a witty parody of Garbo's drawn-out diction). Green manages the tricky feat of balancing the knowing look in Isabelle's eyes and the knowing tone of her deep voice, with the moments when you catch a teenage girl's insecurity sneaking through. Because she plays even Isabelle's greatest affectations as a way to reveal the character, Green seems both in control and completely unprotected, a singular mixture of conscious artifice and exposed nerve endings. It's a brave performance.

Michael Pitt, the most experienced of the three young actors, has appeared in movies like "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Murder by Numbers," and he's brilliant. Pitt's unusual looks, a cherub's full lips set in the unfinished face of a newborn, is the key to Matthew. He's a sensual toy for this pair, but at the same time he has too much pride to completely allow himself to be used. Pitt has a slow, just-waking-up delivery, and yet he can change moods at a quicksilver pace. He makes Matthew both green yet possessed of surprising reserves of common sense -- and good instincts. Matthew is as much spectator to Theo and Isabelle's games as participant. That's what saves him, and it's also what will eventually drive the trio apart. Pitt manages to suggest a young man who freely gives up his heart to be broken but one also strong enough not to be done in by heartbreak.

Next Page: "Be Reasonable: Demand the Impossible"

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