77-year-old Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci is an auteur for using cinematic-escapism from the palate of an avant-gardist. Although Bertolucci’s ‘The Dreamers’ (2003) was directed in the later years of his career, the story is set in 1968 Paris, a time around Bertolucci’s most defining career moments, as well as a revolutionary year for the youth generation in Western history.

In 1968 Paris, the young generation resisted against the government patriarchy and sought out government-banned forms of escapism for leisure, specifically illegal film showings at the Cinematheque Francais.

‘The Dreamers’ speaks more than just reflecting the historical times of the resistance and escapism happening within character’s lives in 1968 Paris, it reflects how successful the psychology of escapsism can be as one’s contemporary life regardless of the times.

““A revolution isn’t a gala dinner. It cannot be created like a book, a drawing or a tapestry. It cannot unfold with such elegance, tranquility and delicacy. Or such sweetness, affability. Courtesy, restraint and generosity. A revolution is an uprising, a violent act by which one class overthrows another.””

— Theo

Eva Green’s first debut was made as the main character, Isabelle. Isabelle was the biggest dreamer out of the trio, her twin brother, Theo (Louis Garrel) and the American exchange student, Matthew (Michael Pitt) who Isabella met outside the Cinematheque Francais before police came and riots fired. The trio’s entire friendship was sexually sparked as they were all enthralled with their contemporary life of pure fantasy and ecstasy, constantly reliving one film they had just seen after the next.

““I thought you had many lovers. I mean when I saw you for the first time,
at the Cinématheque, you and Theo, you looked so cool, so sophisticated. Like a
movie star.”
”

— Matthew

““I was one of the insatiables. The ones you’d always find sitting closest to the
screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the
images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles
of the rows behind us. Before they’d been relayed back from row to row, spectator
to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned
to the projectionist’s cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened
us... from the world.””

— Matthew