Friday, January 06, 2012
REVOLUTIONS
Today's gay film was Bertolucci's
The Dreamers (2003) also a NYTimes Critics' Pick.
I added this favorite film to the gay mix. It was not in the gay preference poll. It is not even very explicitly gay although the interaction of three young people holed up in a Paris lux apartment are three-some sexual enough to make it an example of any sexual arrangement.
Its relevance to gay film is that Bertolucci makes many unheard of assertions against the code and the exhibition of what can only described as abnormal behavior. It was the first film in a long time to get an R-17, the old X. to its credit, the film pushes the envelope without ripping it apart. Abnormal becomes, well, not normal but certainly OK and part of growing up. Experiments.
On another level, the film is a celebration of cinema. The threesome sequesters itself from the outside world living for themselves and in honor of the cinema. They enact favorite scenes and we get snippets of the actual film. Very slick.
It also portrays the time of vast unrest in Paris and demonstrations which begin as a result of a firing of the curator of films at Cinémathèque Française.
In a small, more or less peaceful demonstration the cops go on a rampage and manage to tear apart the thin skin that has held students and other leftist elements in the system. The skin breaks and everything falls apart.
Outside the magic world of the apartment and the lives of the three young people, we begin to hear the noise of protest and battle. A brick through the window causes the three to wake up and find their way outside, into and part of the world.
It is a wonderful film and should be seen many times to "get" it all.
This is the third or fourth time for me. A full fledged 5 out of Netlix5.
