Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Year Released: 2003
Rating: 1.0
Muddled, underdeveloped story of incest and sexual experimentation by a couple of cineastes that talk about revolution but are reluctant to actually do anything about it - the message, I believe, is don't stay inside and watch movies, go outside and make a difference (cinema-love is viewed as unhealthy and psychologically inhibiting - and all this coming from a cineaste). Yet, not much is made of 'participating in the revolt' and, perhaps correctly, one of the 'dreamers' chooses not to throw bombs but use his mind (isn't he supposed to be the 'healthiest' of the three?). But then I figured: maybe there is precisely no point, or more accurately the point is that gratuitous shots of genitalia and a hilarious scene involving the painting of Eva Green's face with her own menstrual blood (a recurring theme: it's also in the bathtub!) are supposed to be shocking and unsettling in themselves ... that the sex is the point, the rest is merely a spectacle and any further advice to the audience is null and void. Not even the one clever idea - including pieces of old movies - reaches its full potential: a proper ending would have further integrated the old and new footage - perhaps culminating in the three 'dreamers' being inside of one of the films they worship - to say something more profound about cinema being life and sex being cinema. But no one ever thought that far ahead.
