February 6, 2004

Son of a…

(please hum Girl From Ipanema to yourselves for a moment)

The Hot Button will now be on a four-syllable time delay. Any time I get the urge to say…

(Tall and tan and young and lovely, The girl from….)

And now…

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers has the primary characteristics of a porn movie… and I’m not really talking about the sex. It starts by establishing a story that actually seems kind of interesting. But as soon as the sex stuff starts, it basically degrades into a bunch of scenes giving audiences a few minutes to recover before getting back to what Bernardo is really interested in… a stunning piece of ass who never puts on any underwear and couldn’t act her way out of anything more than a see-through negligee.

The thing is, I really love the notion of the film. It is more than kind of interesting. It could have been a timeless examination of our tendency to distract ourselves with personal obsessions while painful and important things are happening in the real world. If this were a really good film, it would be analogous to Iraq. If this were a really good film, it would be analogous for apathy about the election. If this were a really good film, it would embarrass us for allowing Janet Jackson’s right breast from dominating the news cycle for an entire week.

But it is not a really good film. The truth is – and most critics will be too myopic to even consider this – Gigli is a significantly more ambitious effort to examine human sexuality and its effect on human interaction and perception. Gigli did fail. But - with its sexually ambivalent hitwoman, a mentally challenged boy who still has a clear sexual drive, and Larry Gigli, who is more emotionally retarded than the bo - in retrospect, if Gigli had been made independently and been free to explore its sexual themes without the limitations and gloss of a studio production, it might have gotten very interesting indeed.

The Dreamers has all the pedigree of a film that is about something other than Eva Green’s head-to-toe iconic physicality. The set-up is an American teen landing in 1968 Paris and joining in with the cinematheque crowd, though maintaining a distance as he observes the movie movement. When the government gets in the way of the passionate pursuit of Jerry Lewis’ genius, our hero hooks up with beautiful twins whose absentee parents just happen to be headed out of town for a month, leaving a remarkable set in which the trio can romp for 2 hours.

What will these too-beautiful social onanists do when left to their own devices? Will their bourgeois notions ever be challenged? Where will the incestuous subtext between the twins lead to some insight? Will Bertolucci ever take the serious revolution of the world outside infringe on the disconnected claims of passion inside this apartment of musk?

Maybe there is a sequel in the works…

Without even going for films established as classics, there are titles that do what Bertolucci forgot to. Roman Coppola’s CQ is a better film about film obsession in that era. Kirsten Sheridan’s Disco Pigs actually burrows into the emotional turmoil of the separation-by-sexual-coming-of-age of a dangerously close boy and girl. Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Lover was sexier and more insightful about young lust in the hothouse of a contained space while the world outside is in turmoil.

What Bertolucci seemed ready to tap into was the insidious nature of Woody Allen’s work, movies that speak to those of us who can afford to love them. It seemed that he was prepared to pierce the façade, as Allen did himself in Crimes & Misdemeanors and Husbands & Wives, acknowledging the real pain and self-delusion behind the cityscapes. Perhaps sex might have been for Bertolucci what humor is for Allen, a way to avoid the pain, but eventually to expose it.

But instead, what we got was Bertolucci’s version of Allen’s “funny ones,” where there was just enough insight to get the audience busting a gut. Bernardo was out, it seems, to bust a hymen. Unfortunately, his movie is not nearly as sexy as Allen’s were funny. And the fascinating premise disappears soon after Ms. Green’s foundation garments… and neither ever comes back.

E Me. Come back.