The Dreamers is set in Paris in 1968, and according to director Bernardo Bertolucci, it is a film that attempts to capture the extraordinary spirit of the times. Bertolucci appears to be much less interested in the political upheaval than in the concurrent sexual revolution, but that might just be us.

In The Dreamers, Michael Pitt plays Matthew, a young American living in Paris. He meets Isabelle (Eva Green) and her brother Theo (Louis Garrel) -- twins who share Matthew's passion for cinema. After a few meetings, Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to live at their apartment for a month while their parents are away in the country.

Once they are all living together, the three begin to play mind games and sexcapades. They quiz each other with movie trivia. They drink wine and talk philosophy. They have sex. They smoke dope. They take long baths together.

After about a month of immersing themselves in each other, eating badly, forgetting to pay the bills and contemplating suicide and other such existential necessities, our trio of bright young things suddenly notices that outside, where they haven't been lately, people seem to be rioting in the streets. Hey!

To riot or not to riot? Matthew, the American -- irony of ironies! -- counsels against violence of any kind. Remember? Vietnam? Peaceniks? No, no, we won't go?

Of course you don't.

And if you do, you will be disappointed to find that The Dreamers cannot recreate the electrifying elements of the times -- when all that had been previously forbidden became possible, and so forth. You had to be there.

Taken as a pretty picture rather than as a social document, The Dreamers is, you might say, pretty. Beautiful-young-people-with-no-clothes-on is always a reasonable filmmaking gambit, although strangely -- for all the R-rating and full frontal nudity -- The Dreamers is not sexy. Or sensual. Or daring, even for 1968. Maybe Bertolucci felt the censors at his elbow even as he filmed this one? It's that flat.

The Dreamers is also slow. The real world in which these characters live is only hinted at, making their behaviour look mighty precious most of the time. The word "pretentious" has come up more than once in other people's descriptions of The Dreamers; we just found it dishonest.

(This film is rated R)

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