While at the Cinémathèque Française protesting the firing of its director, Henri Langlois, he meets free-spirited twins Théo and Isabelle, the children of a famous French poet and his English wife.

Matthew becomes suspicious of Théo and Isabelle's relationship after seeing them sleeping nude together; he soon discovers that they have a liberal attitude towards nudity and sexuality.

As Matthew walks away through the chaos, Théo takes Isabelle's hand and hurls a Molotov cocktail at a line of police.

The first draft of the screenplay was an adaptation by Gilbert Adair of his own novel, The Holy Innocents (1988), inspired by the novel Les Enfants terribles (1929) by Jean Cocteau and the eponymous film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1950.

During pre-production, Bertolucci made changes to it: he "peppered the narrative with clips from the films he loves" and dropped homosexual content – including scenes from the novel that depict Matthew and Théo having sex – which he felt was "just too much."

"[7] Jake Gyllenhaal screen tested for the role of Matthew alongside Green, but eventually withdrew himself from consideration due to concerns about the film's nudity.

"[7] Fox Searchlight Pictures gave the uncut version a limited theatrical release in the United States in 2004; it played in 116 theaters at its peak.

"[11] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 63 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

"[13] The Times called it a "heady blend of Last Tango and Stealing Beauty, but one that combines the grubbily voyeuristic elements of each film rather than their relative strengths.

The soundtrack was released in February 2004; AllMusic gave it three out of five, noting that "while its juxtapositions of French tradition and counterculture are jarring at times, Dreamers still does a worthy job of capturing the film's personal and political revolutions through music.

"[16] Though the music of Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company was featured prominently in the film, none of the songs were included on the soundtrack.

Bob Dylan's song "Queen Jane Approximately", from the album Highway 61 Revisited, is also used in the film but is not included on the soundtrack.