good back-story, and good acting

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Bertolucci was heavily indebted to Godard and the other French New Wave directors in his sophomore feature, Before the Revolution. His third feature, Partner, has him follow Godard into his fin de cinema. Partner is a purely experimental film with little narrative. It's definitely a turn for the worst for Bertolucci. Thankfully he was drawn back into narrative cinema with his fourth film, The Conformist. Partner is worth seeing for fans of the director and New Wave enthusiasts. It has some interesting points. The minimal plot of the film has Pierre Clémenti playing a man with split personalities. Most of the rest of it is made up of random vignettes. Some are amusing, some are annoying. Some are just plain boring. Unfortunately, there just aren't enough amusing ones to make it an easy watch. Clémenti is excellent, and Bertolucci lives up to his reputation as one of the cinema's greatest visual minds. Stefania Sandrelli, who would go on to star in The Conformist, appears briefly with curly blonde hair. She doesn't do much, but she's gorgeous.

It's not easy to rate an experimental film on the same scale as films that were intended to be seen by wider commercial audiences, and "Partner" is an experimental film. Many have criticized Bertolucci for aping Godard's style in this film, and certainly there are liberal elements of "Two Or Three Things I Know About Her" and "Weekend," but the camera work and cinematography and even the Morricone score are all indicative of an Italian filmmaker, more so than the French new wave that served as the defacto inspiration. But if one is forced to point out the films that it followed, one should also illuminate the many films that it inspired, whether directly or indirectly, and that list is at least as impressive. The easy heir is "Fade To Black," which follows a would-be actor on his descent into madness and murder. The over-the-top performance of Pierre Clementi is exchanged (perhaps as a sign of the times) for the understated twitchiness of Dennis Christopher, but the whole story is here. One can chose to credit the original Dostoyevsky story, but the film reference reads truer as an influence on the later film when considering what a lose adaptation "Partner" was of "The Double." In fact, Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" could just as easily have served as the source material when dissected the faithfulness of the Amico script of the Russian author's work (and of course only for the sake of argument, as Dostoyevsky is clearly credited). Less obvious may be the impact that Partner had on Bertolucci's Italian peers. A mere year later, "Love And Anger" would unite the Italian filmeratti with Godard to launch a collaborative New Wave film. It's unlikely this would have happened were it not for the release of "Partner." Likewise, the classroom discussions of "Zabriskie Point" betray more in common with this film than with Antonioni's previous output, and yet it can also be said that certain scene compositions in "Partner" could trace their routes back to Antonioni's "Blow Up." The composition is very similar though the camera movement is not. Even when examining Bertolucci's future output, one can point to Partner as the turning point in his artistic style. Up to that point his work was devoid of the cinema reference that pervades "Partner" (the Odessa steps parody, amongst others) and was toned down in "The Conformist" and "Last Tango In Paris." As an experiment, Partner is more of a success than a failure. It's not simple, casual viewing. It's a hard to digest film from a man who has absorbed and digested more about film than most others. It's comparable to Louis Malle's "Black Moon," but predates it by seven years. "Partner" is an oddity. It's unlikely to have a broad appeal, which is probably a good thing. This isn't going to sway the "Shrek" crowd, that's for sure. To an extent, you either get this film or you don't. The same can be said for dozens of films and filmmakers who are held in high regard by people who hold this film in contempt (it's tonally very close to Jodorowski's "Santa Sangre"). I for one am glad I've seen it. It's not perfect, but it's thought provoking, well made and less self indulgent than a lot of recent art-house fare from culty sacred cows ("Inland Empire," anyone?). Most people will find their way to this film as part of their Bertolucci completism. Some may be Tina Aumont obsessed. I don't think either will be greatly disappointed.

Yes we know that many people think that life is absurd and meaningless and society is hopeless. Fortunately many more still think that life has a meaning and society can be reformed and changed. This movie also intends to pass another message which is that life is not real and only the theatre is real. Well the great German poet, Novalis, once said that poetry is the absolute real but that had quite another sense perhaps. Anyway what we watch here is a succession of scenes and dialogues void of any meaning at all and of any plot that can be followed. Bertolucci is a great film director but I think that this movie doesn't honour him at all.

After that it degenerates into an exercise in employing old art film cliches. Though he bases his movie on the Dostoyevsky story 'The Double', Bertolucci apparently has no message, and no original way to present it. By the end this movie has dragged you through a tedium of stupidity and indulgence. This is the kind of film that gives art movies a bad name. 4/10