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Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor) takes on the intimate tale of an American student (Michael Pitt) who falls into an intense, unusual relationship with French siblings (Louis Garrel and Eva Green). The sexually-explicit escapades earned the film an NC-17 rating, but there’s an underlying sweetness and shared vulnerability in the direction and performances. I love how Bertolucci embellishes the characters’ shared obsession with cinema by flashing clips from classic films — even recreating shots and scenes from them. The turbulent ’60s work as a nice backdrop, but less so as a contrived plot device in the third act. Still, The Dreamers does one thing superlatively — it paints a beautiful portrait of that fleeting, intoxicating sensation of romantic infatuation, just before it transforms into love… or burns itself out.