Set in Paris in the spring of 1968—the defining moment of Bertolucci’s generation—The Dreamers begins with the firing of the beloved director of Paris’s Cinémathèque Française, and the public uproar that follows. An ode to transgression in cinema, sex, and politics, the film is divided between the insular, claustrophobic world of three attractive young protagonists—who, cloistered inside a huge bourgeois apartment and naked for much of the film, engage in escalating sexual exploration—and masterfully choreographed crowd scenes of demonstrators squaring off with police outside. Bertolucci’s blending of history and fiction mirrors the life-imitating-film games played by his cinema-obsessed protagonists.