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Mar. 14 - Mar. 21, 2004 |
Continuing to court controversy
Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci remembers 1968 Paris in latest film The Dreamers
By Angela Baldassarre
Originally Published: 2004-02-15
One of Italy's last surviving master filmmakers - if not the world - Bernardo Bertolucci introduced this writer to a cinematic world of astounding thoughts and passion when, at the tender age of 13, she was introduced to The Conformist. I've since admired his past works (Before the Revolution, The Spider's Stratagem), and his later ones (Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky). And though his movies of late (Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty, Besieged) have eluded both critical and box-office success on this side of the Atlantic, the 64-year-old filmmaker refuses to compromise on his vision.
His latest film, The Dreamers, proves equally controversial. The movie, which centres on the life of an American student, Matthew (Michael Pitt) who befriends promiscuous twins Isabelle and Theo (Eva Green, Louis Garrel) in 1968 Paris, has come under fire from American censors for the amount of explicit sex depicted. The movie, in fact, carries the NC-17 rating, the first time in recent memory that a film distributed by a company owned by a major studio - in this case, Twentieth Century Fox's Fox Searchlight - carries the rating.
Tandem talked Bernardo Bertolucci recently in New York City.
When the film showed in Venice you were afraid they would censor it, and they didn't. What happened?
"To be frank, I have no idea what happened. Of course, if anything the movie would look more obscene when you are going to cut it. I always remember Adam and Eve, because I think that somebody put, through the centuries, a fig leaf in front of the genitals, and I think that they are much more obscene with the fig leaves. When you go to do these cuts they become more titillating. I don't think that nudity's obscene, especially the nudity of these kids, who are so innocent. I'm much happier. And also I think it's not just for this film, it's a good way of breaking the ice for other companies."
The greater story seems to be that of Paris and of the situation at that point and what we remember about that. In a way this is revisionist history.
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