20 2000s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today

Bernardo Bertolucci was a controversial director thanks to so many of his projects, and yet it’s one of his most fondly remembered productions – erotic-romantic drama The Dreamers – that would prove challenging to make today.

Based on The Holy Innocents by Gilbert Adair, The Dreamers sees US exchange student Matthew (Michael Pitt) meet twins Théo and Isabelle (Louis Garrel and Eva Green) in Paris and embark upon the most bohemian chapter of his life. Left alone in the twins’ parents’ house for a month, he finds that the pair share an unusually close bond, spending time naked together, sleeping together and, yes, sleeping together.

What could be sinister and sleazy instead pans out as a curiously affecting tumble through a microcosm of life, as the trio play house, dream of revolution, and revel in their high-brow interests. And yet, even with all that said, there is little chance this film would be made today, let alone at a cost of €16 million. Fox Searchlight (now Disney) hasn't gone in for open sibling incest in decades – no matter how good the film – and neither they nor any other major studio or financier are about to start now.