Yes, there’s lots of sex and full-frontal nudity, but this is really a film about the intoxicating allure of cinema and its desensitising power, written by the last genuinely great philosopher film critic, Gilbert Adair.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 26, 2024

If The Dreamers lacks the quality of Bertolucci's masterpieces, it still exhibits a ripeness that has been missing from his recent work.

| May 27, 2022

Bertolucci's overarching message - and the purpose of the story - is almost entirely lost to the youthful, callow, anarchic, pervasive sex and nudity.

| Original Score: 3/10 | Sep 29, 2020

Although the story falls apart in places and has some twists that are inserted only as a means to an end, [Bernardo] Bertolucci still has the ability to draw you in and use sexuality as a form of art.

| Nov 7, 2019

Bertolucci and his writer, Gilbert Adair, are driven to the tritest sexual and emotional clichés to fill the screen and the time.

| Aug 20, 2018

The problem here isn't so much the outdated content as the outmoded way of selling Highbrow to a popular audience...With the kind of false bravery that defines this film, by its end Bertolucci admits there are a few problems with Maoist conformity.

| Apr 26, 2018

The pleasures of "The Dreamers" stay mostly on the surface. But when the surface is as stylish and sexy as this, it's hard to complain.

| Mar 13, 2018

Legendary director Bernardo Bertolucci ("1900") crafts a return to social revolt in the form of sexual pursuits by a trio of late '60s teenaged students in this engaging yet insufficient movie.

| Original Score: B | Aug 27, 2009

Despite the movie's well-earned NC-17, Bertolucci's own ménage à trois favors cinephilia over the related pleasures of politics and sex.

| Aug 21, 2009

Bertolucci tops himself.

| Apr 29, 2009

It's an amusing, sophisticated movie, true to its times, cheerfully erotic, and played with unselfconscious conviction by its three young actors.

| Dec 7, 2007

The film is at once a celebration of the sexual revolution and a celebration of cinema as the secular equivalent of religion, at a time when movies really mattered.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 3, 2006

Fans of film and gorgeous naked people of either sex will find much here to interest them. But it also has moments that make you want to throw stones.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

A real pleasure.

| Jan 26, 2006

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 5, 2005

The venue for Pitt's marvelous coming-out performance.

| Original Score: B- | May 3, 2005

...we feel stranded on a soundstage, mummy-wrapped in film studies and bereft of any genuine emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 8, 2005

The Dreamers is a richly imagined, boldly acted ode to the delirium of a generation that didn't know it was dreaming.

| Nov 20, 2004

| Original Score: D | Aug 7, 2004

Exhilarating.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2004