And then this miracle happened and Bernardo gave me that part. You know when you feel like you can’t express yourself as an actor? Like you’re in a straitjacket? I didn’t know if I wanted to continue. I really loved going to drama school, but the play was very harsh. I didn’t like the play I was doing I didn’t like the way it was directed. Why had you become disillusioned with your work at that point? It was very Bertolucci: inside a flat, three teenagers exploring. I thought it was just a really beautiful love story between three people. I was like, “I don’t care!” I loved the story.
And even though there were lots of nude scenes, I was desperate to do it. I was a big, big fan of Bernardo - I had a big poster of Last Tango in Paris in my room. So I had a casual conversation in front of the camera with Louis Garrel, and I had to come back two weeks later to do a couple of scenes and then I got the part. I was skeptical, because I wasn’t happy with what I was doing onstage at the time.
Bertolucci! As if he’s going to give me a role. I was not really believing I’d get the part. This was your first movie, which is pretty wild. release (it’s on VOD now), I called up Green to talk about her memories of filming The Dreamers, her relationship with Bertolucci, how her dynamics with Garrel and Pitt mirrored those they created onscreen, and the distinctly American fixation on the film’s nudity and sex. Green plays Sarah, an astronaut preparing to spend a year on the International Space Station but conflicted about leaving her young daughter (Zélie Boulant-Lemesle) behind. Green has spent the decades since playing a wide variety of fantastical, occasionally similarly sultry characters - witches and paranormal heroines and femmes fatales and women preyed upon by the underworld - but her new film, Proxima, is one of her most grounded performances yet. It’s a refreshing and incredibly youthful performance, capturing the overflowing spirit of a confused, love-addled, cinema-obsessed young woman on the verge of growing up and figuring herself out. In several scenes, she’s called upon to imitate Old Hollywood legends like Jean Seberg and Greta Garbo, and she does so endearingly well but not flawlessly, grounding the otherwise elusive Isabelle. Green is incandescent as Isabelle, equal parts glittering and cruel, confident and deeply vulnerable.
But I’ve always liked it because of its unabashed weirdness, and because it marks the impressive cinematic debut of Green. But over the years, it’s become a sort of cult favorite, in large part because of its taboo nature, flagrant sexuality, and the controversy surrounding Bertolucci as a filmmaker. The Dreamers didn’t make much of an impact upon release (though Roger Ebert loved it), and it’s nearly impossible to find online now, save for some sketchy porn sites. In certain scenes, it comes across like your overeager Film 101 classmate who won’t shut up about the French New Wave in other moments, it’s lush and moody, an encapsulation of what it feels like to be young and horny and wildly passionate about nearly everything. Much like its central characters, The Dreamers is uneven and lively and a little bit unhinged, filled with sex and nudity and digressive bathtub rants about Mao.
Set on the precipice of Paris’s 1968 student uprisings, the story follows the lusty trio as they fall in and out of love with each other, argue about Charlie Chaplin, quiz one another about classic movie scenes, play manipulative sex games, and casually trash their parents’ massive Parisian apartment. Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Fox Searchlight Picturesīernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 movie The Dreamers is as much a ménage à trois between three young students - wide-eyed American Matthew (Michael Pitt) and incestuous French twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green) - as it is between politics, sex, and film. “Even though there were lots of nude scenes, I was desperate to do it.
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