“Bertolucci, seeking a literary structure to elucidate certain political concepts, adapted Dostoevsky's ‘The Double' for his third feature, Partner. Pierre Clementi plays a drama teacher in the throes of romantic despair who is saved from suicide by the emergence of a violent, assertive alter-ego. Initially disturbed by the interplay of such disparate identities, the docile Jacob struggles to suppress his other self, a revolutionary; driven to extremes, he constructs a guillotine to kill it. Part of a guerilla theater troupe, Jacob becomes despondent when his street performance fails to transpire and he retreats to his flat furnished with books and Vietnam liberation posters. Gradually Jacob-the-passive succumbs to his schizoid nature, recognizing the intrinsic value of the revolutionary other which effectively accomplishes that which his impotent conscious identity cannot. Believing ‘the only duty of a man of the theater is to make theater,' Jacob completely assumes the darker side of his duality. In the end, the two envision the quintessential Artaudian performance.
“Literary comparisons aside, Partner illustrates how one individual, traumatized by modern society, chooses to cope. Wide-angle pans, violent lighting schemes, and disorienting camera movements convey the varying stages of a thoughtful mind going awry. Bertolucci's visual sense, as poetic as it is eloquent, captures the frightening incoherencies of contemporary times.” --L.A. Thielen