Three's a charm: Bertolucci's third undertaking takes on Dostoevsky's The Double with the exuberant Pierre Clémenti playing his own delirious doppelganger. A shy drama teacher, Jacob (Clémenti reined in) imagines a theater of the streets culminating in revolution. But tethered by his own reserve, he cannot carry it forth. One day while musing on his frustrated desires, including an unrequited love for his mentor's daughter Clara (Stefania Sandrelli), Jacob births from his very inhibitions a flesh-and-blood alter ego (Clémenti unleashed). This Jacob, Jacob II in the credits, is fully capable of consummating his desires both personal and political. As in Before the Revolution that preceded it and The Conformist that followed, Partner pursues those irreconcilable impulses of youth––the anarchic energy of radical change coupled to the comforting conservation of the status quo. Bertolucci doubles the pleasure with a disintegrative narrative given equivalent fanfare by Ennio Morricone's finely serrated score. As the political pot boils, the two Jacobs become indistinguishable and action and imagination finally merge, on screen as in the streets of 1968.