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.

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.

This rather ludicrous exchange takes place at the end of David Lean's adaptation of Boris Pasternak's epic novel DR. ZHIVAGO:Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Tonya, can you play the balalaika?Tonya's Boyfriend: Can she play? She's an artist!This dialogue, as well as the scene within the framing device of Yuri Zhivago's brother Yevgraf finding Yuri's love child with Lara and telling her about her "past," appears nowhere in the novel. Instead, in an epilogue in the novel, two of the many characters, after the end of the Great Patriotic War (World War II), talk about how one had met this love child at the front. Their ruminations illustrate the great dislocations caused by the Revolution, Stalin's Terror, and the War. Nowhere does something as silly and trivial as the question "Can you play the balalaika?" appear in the novel.Movies that use great events as backdrops to personal stories tend to trivialize the great events and make the intimate lives of their characters rather absurd and trivial (ironically, the very charge Strelnikov makes to Zhivago, in reference to his poetry, in Lean's movie). Great events such as revolutions wash over everyone and have to be handled with the greatest care to avoid this fundamental absurdity of the events being greater than the individuals.Before "The Dreamers," Bertolucci already made his film that ruminates on the events of '68 and its aftermath in the year itself:"Partner" ("Il Sosia"), based on Dostoyevsky's "The Double." It is very interesting, and very honest, look at the spirit of the times and I highly recommend it.

Movie making is a form of expression that has in recent years been subject to a mold of narrative. The Partner is a genuine example of a film that does not comform to the standard. As always Bertolucci was able to draw performances that transform t characters he created into tangable moments. Particularly remarkable is Pierre Clementi's performance of a man with two identities. Made at the early age of 22, this film is a window into an artist mind. Open your mind and just allow yourself to enjoy the ride.