It comes very natural to compare the two - in my opinion - diametrically opposite with "young Garrel" as the common denominator. For different reasons, I enjoyed both, although I must admit I found this one a little overlong. I was glad I saw it, though!
Both travesties I think. "The Dreamers" was kind of silly and had very little to do with May 68. This was tedious and undramatic and had very little to do with May 68. At least "The Dreamers" was a bit of fun, though.
Better to go back to source and see the films that were actually made then, and in the early '70s, I reckon. Godard, Tavernier, Faraldo, Tanner, even Bertolucci himself with "Partner" all had a more interesting take on the events than either of these movies.
Bush Logic:- Killing American embryos = murder. Killing Arab civilians = business as usual.
This film captured the time much better than "The Dreamers," but in a less obvious way. The sense of initial excitement, revolution, and utopian ideals, followed by the inevitable disillusionment, the come down/crash, and constant contradictions among the ideals of the students is captured here perfectly. The students did not fight in the streets with Jimi Hendrix blaring in the background. The Dreamers is a highly romantcized and silly film. The style of this film also capture the times in the sense that he uses some of the very techniques that French directors of the time, such as Godard, used. This film actually feels as if it were made in Paris in the late 60's. That said, I still think that Godard's "Weekend" captures the times with all of the contradictions and flaws of both the bourgeies and the activists, better than any other. However, going by the very problems people seem to be having with getting this film, I'm imagine they would completely hate "Weekend," since it is even more abstract and not obvious.
shareI thought The Dreamers was an incredibly stupid and ugly film, a pale attempt to copy Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terrible. The acting was great but the dialogues painful, pretentious and hollow. Les Amants Réguliers, directed by Philippe Garrel, which was in the streets with Godard in may 1968, might be long but is beautifuly shot, the scene of 1968 riots is rivetting and looks like a painting, the acting subtle and deep. It's an amazing contemplative film. The Dreamers ennoyed me because it was too talkative and so cliché : look at those french people, how perverted and dissolute they are, compare them to this innocent and pure american kid (please give me a break, the yanks have nothing to teach the french in amorality and perversion). Garrel is still doing a young cinema while Bertolucci is only trying to shock, his cinema is old and bourgeois, he should retire once for good.
share*** SPOILERS***
I LOVED The Dreamers. It was very subtle I thought. Almost every single line in that film has some meaning outside of the context it is in.
I personally loved the scene where Louis Garrel's character is breaking eggs at the same time his sister is losing her virginity which in effect he is forcing her to do. All the while in this scene you can hear sirens and shouting in the streets showing that Louis and Eva's characters are extremely immature and naive - yes they are meant to be bourgeois and pretentious. They are more involved with drinking old wines and having sex and doing drugs and listening to music than becoming involved in the world events right on their dorrstep. When they finally do become involved, it is after a brick comes through their window, thus bringing the outside in to them. Their reactions are almost knee-jerk and it is Matthew, the American, who tries to make them see sense. That there are better ways to change the world through love, poetry and talking than by throwing petrol bombs.
Sorry, it's just such a powerful film. I even wrote my university dissertaion based on The Dreamers!
I'm still not sure if I want to watch Regular Lovers because so many people have said it is bad... :/
Basically, "The Dreamers" is senile, and "Les Amants..." is youthful.
shareBut the production of this new movie has nothong to do with The Dreamers, right? Other than the time period and the same male lead actor?
shareI saw this movie as a direct response to "The Dreamers", who was fun, but didn't take that time seriously and was too focused on the sex and not on the events that took place in 68. To me when Clotilde turns to the Camera and says "Bernardo Bertolucci" was the proof of that. Something like "hey man you did a tremendous realist movie 40 years ago and now you give us this Hollywood thing? Come on!"
So Garrell decide to make a movie about that time, as things were. And made it.
Which one was better?
share
I couldn't agree more.
Les Amants réguliers was a direct responce to Dreamers. When Garrel saw The Dreamers it upset him as he felt that Bertolucci didn't captured that time correctly (which Garrel was apart of), so in turn he made his own film. As someone already mentioned there is the scene where Clotilde asks whether someone has seen "Before the Revolution" then turns to the camera and says "Bernardo Bertolucci". This appearently was a friendly attack as Bertolucci and Garrel are good friends.
I agree. I also think it's part of the comparison that there's no visual sex, barely a kiss here and there, as "Dreamers" was so explicit.
The films are so different, but this one certainly captures the youthful feelings of 1968 much better, using some of the New Wave look and no crutches of costume, wigs, and only 2 period songs. It's more honest about the limitations of youthful idealism without making them crazy.
Actually, both the Nico song and The Kinks song were recorded after 1968, at the beginning of the 70s.
sharei liked The Dreamers
i did not like Regular Lovers
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The camparison came to my mind immediatly. I liked 'The Dreamers', and also as I was a teenager in 1968 the films tell me a lot about my feelings at that time. Actually director Philippe Garrel does not seem to avoid comparing with his much more famous colleague, sharing the principal actor and even including a direct replica eye-in-viewer-eye about an older film of Bertolucci. And yet, LAR is a different film, and an interesting one.
The story line seems also familiar. The movie starts with long scenes of the 1968 'emeutes', maybe among the best done until now. The film is made in black-and-white, and the perspective of the static camera on one side or the other of the barricade reminds Eisenstein. Then, as in The Dreamers, the action moves in the Parisian flat where the heroes of the defeated revolt make art, smoke drugs, dream, and fall for one other. There is no direct social comment, no real explanation of the background of the revolt. The movie focuses on the psychology of the characters and on the love story between the main characters. It's like a premonition of the process of transition to the establishment that the generation of the 1968 went through, it's just that not all the participants may adapt or survive.
The film is more about the characters than about the events. And it is merely for the style it will be remembered about. The black-and-white cinema is memorable not only in the revolution scenes, but also when looking at the characters evolution. Many sequences are enhanced by a technique that is derived from the silent films movies, with long takes accompanied by a off piano tune. The effect is exquisite. Yet the length of the film is hardly justified, it lasts more than three hours and I doubt that cutting it to only two hours would have been a miss - actually I am convinced it's quite a contrary.
I do not believe that Les Amants Reguliers raises at the depth and subtlety of Bertolucci's movie. It is a different perspective to remember about, and an interesting film however.
I must admit that I loved both Les Amants Reguliers and The Dreamers, but they are by nature two fundamentally different films.
Les Amants Regulers is a film that is directly concerned with the ideas embodied by May 1968. It attempts to harmonize youth and revolution, and is, in a sense, a plea for the reemergance of a revolutionary spirit in modern youth, which, for the most part, appears to be absent. The characters have their own individual experiences, but their lives are fundamentally grounded in the aftermath of May 68. It could kind of be called a very subtle Dziga-Vertov film.
The Dreamers uses May 68 as a backdrop, not a theme (however much it may try). Bertolucci is intrigued by May 68, but his characters and their interaction interest him more. Revolution is alluded to in part, but never made whole. The ending, which is easiest to see as a comment on May 68, is better seen as a comment on the characters themselves. Again, revolution as a setting, not as a subject (as in Garrel's film).
I think the better of the two is Garrel's; Bertolucci gets caught up in his own style and ego too often to succeed as brilliantly as Garrel does, and pretentiousness weighs his film down.
Some of the riot scenes do drag a bit but overall I thought it added to the frustration that a lot people were feeling at the time. I enjoyed the film.
shareYes, I loved both films immensely, although I felt Les Amants Réguliers was more of an antithesis to The Dreamers, the films are more diametrically opposite than comparable.
Anyone who liked or loved either film might also love La Maman Et La Putain (1973). La Maman is immensely closer plot-wise and character-wise to Les Amants Réguliers than The Dreamers.