Film

The Dreamers

Bertolucci's fevered ode to cinephilia and revolution: three film-obsessed twenty-somethings barricade themselves in a Paris apartment during the 1968 riots and build a hermetic world of movie quizzes, incest-tinged intimacy and explicit sex. Gorgeous, uncomfortable, unapologetically horny — it's for people who love cinema history and can tolerate a film that mistakes its own indulgence for daring. Not for the squeamish or impatient.

TMDb rating7.2

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Jules and Jim1962

Truffaut's original triangle-of-devotion movie: two friends, one woman, decades of shifting loyalty and desire, shot with the same restless, playful camera Theo and Isabelle would worship. It's the New Wave film The Dreamers is secretly in love with.

But Its lightness and irony can feel like a cool shrug next to Bertolucci's fevered intensity.

Jules and Jim poster

Last Tango in Paris1972no page yet

Bertolucci's earlier, rawer study of a stranger and grief-stricken desperation inside a shuttered Paris apartment — same director, same claustrophobic intimacy, same willingness to make explicit sex the whole plot.

But It's bleaker and crueler, with none of The Dreamers' playful cinephile warmth — this one just hurts.

Call Me by Your Name2017

A gentler, sun-drenched cousin: first desire, secrecy, and the particular ache of a summer that has to end, filmed with the same unhurried sensual patience.

But It's tender where The Dreamers is confrontational — go elsewhere if you want the provocation, not just the longing.

Call Me by Your Name poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Regular Lovers2005no page yet

Directed by Philippe Garrel — Louis Garrel's actual father — and starring Louis Garrel in almost the same role, this is the same May '68 apartment-and-politics story told by someone who actually lived it, shot black-and-white instead of gorgeous colour.

Three unhurried, black-and-white hours of the real hangover after the barricades — poetry, hash, and disillusion instead of Bertolucci's glossy games. The serious, exhausted version of the same night.

But It is slow, mournful and nearly plotless by design — anyone wanting more of The Dreamers' heat will find this cold and grieving instead.

More like this (8)

Y Tu Mamá También2001

Two boys, one woman, a road trip that turns into something far more intimate and political — Cuarón's version of the same three-way intoxication, with Mexico's own upheavals humming underneath.

But The politics are more explicit and less romanticised than Bertolucci's — this one insists you look outward, not just inward.

Y Tu Mamá También poster

Blue Is the Warmest Color2013no page yet

An unflinchingly physical, years-spanning romance that treats explicit sex as emotional information rather than spectacle — the obvious next stop if the intimacy is what stayed with you.

But Three hours of one relationship's slow collapse is a heavier, sadder watch than Bertolucci's hermetic fantasy.

Cabaret1972

Berlin instead of Paris, cabaret instead of cinema, but the same idea: beautiful young people building a decadent private world while history burns down the street outside.

But It's a musical, tonally lighter and jazzier — the politics arrive as menace rather than as the barricades themselves.

Cabaret poster

Stealing Beauty1996no page yet

Bertolucci again, softer this time: a teenage American drifts through a Tuscan villa full of artists and old lovers, all simmering want and half-said longing.

But It's slower and far less explicit — a mood piece, not the sensory assault The Dreamers delivers.

Betty Blue1986no page yet

French, explicit, and completely unashamed of its own heat — a couple's consuming, destructive passion filmed with the same lush, unblinking camera as Bertolucci's trio.

But It curdles into something much darker and far more violent than anything The Dreamers ever attempts.

Savage Nights1992no page yet

Cyril Collard's own semi-autobiographical vision of Paris, all appetite and danger, made under the shadow of AIDS — desire filmed with the same reckless, present-tense urgency.

But It's rougher, sadder and more explicitly political about its era than Bertolucci's nostalgic fantasy of 1968.

Design for Living1933

A pre-Code Hollywood comedy about exactly the same arrangement — two men, one woman, all loving each other and refusing to choose — made seventy years before The Dreamers dared to be explicit, and getting away with more than you'd expect.

Fast, witty, and startlingly frank for 1933: a ménage à trois played as sophisticated comedy rather than transgression, with dialogue as sharp as anything Bertolucci's trio quote at each other.

But It's black-and-white studio comedy with none of the sex or nudity — the daring is entirely in the writing, not the image.

Design for Living poster

Chronicle of a Summer1961no page yet

A real cinéma-vérité documentary made in Paris a few years before 1968, asking ordinary young people 'are you happy?' — the actual restless, questioning generation The Dreamers' fictional trio are performing a fantasy of.

You get the real texture of the youth and unease that produced May '68, filmed with the raw, improvisational camera style the New Wave and Bertolucci both inherited.

But It's a slow, talky documentary with no plot and no eroticism — the opposite pleasure from Bertolucci's sealed, sensual dream.

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Recommended by

The Virgin Suicides, Y Tu Mamá También, Design for Living, Pierrot le Fou, Nymphomaniac: Vol. II, Jules and Jim