DIRECTED BY Bernardo Bertolucci
STARRING Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel
Opens February 6, Cert 18, 115 mins
Film buffs have never looked less sexy than they do in Bertolucci’s curiously distant rendering of Paris in May 1968. True, the film buffs in question spend most of their time lounging naked, playing psycho-sexual mind games and rutting feverishly. And yes, all three stars (Pitt, Garrel and, in particular, Green) are undeniably easy on the eye?something Bertolucci is at pains to stress with lots of salivating camera lingering on flesh. But there’s something off-putting about the way the three characters brandish their knowledge of arcane film trivia like membership to a Masonic cult. No one likes a know-it-all, even a lithe-limbed, sexually adventurous one.
The backdrop of the May ’68 unrest is just that?a kind of revolutionary wallpaper that is distinct from the central story. Apart from an abrupt concluding scene, the only time the dissent on the streets encroaches into the lives of the three protagonists is when they meet for the first time, protesting at the sacking of Henri Langlois, the director of the Cin