I've just returned from a screening of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which is the most visually textured and beautiful movie I've seen since In the Mood for Love. It's also psychologically dubious, often absurd, and ultimately unsuccessful as a human story. However, I loved so much of it so deeply that I can only recommend it, flaws and all, as the closest thing to an unmissable movie I've seen all year. It's swoony with sex and movie lust, incredibly lovely, and drenched in good music. The parts are better than the whole, but few recent movies have had so many delectable parts.

Many of these parts, it should be noted, are the property of a young actress named Eva Green, who reminds me that one of the noblest things a camera can do is simply follow around a beautiful girl as she does...nothing in particular. Wong Kar-Wai and Sofia Coppola seem to have figured this out, but only the French have made it into an entire genre. There are certain French actresses whom I could happily observe for two hours in a darkened theater, and Eva Green is almost enough to make you forget about Virginie Ledoyen.