Already [Partner] is heavily dated. Cinematically it's redolent of high sixties Godard; politically it's full of late sixties rhetoric and gesture. But for all its imitations, its slavish obedience to mode that poses as bravery, it shows some talent and authenticity.

With Bertolucci's later work, The Spider's Stratagem, The Conformist, and much of Last Tango, I felt as if I were walking barefoot over rotten fruit. Here I felt it much less; and felt that, despite the clichés, there was some conviction. Although Bertolucci had enlisted in the Godardian ranks and was snapping to attention and executing orders, he was doing it as a zealous partisan. In later pictures he became an interior decorator in cinematic excelsis.

For me, the best whole Bertolucci is still his first film shown here, Before the Revolution; his best sequences are the early sex scenes in Last Tango; but Partner has some genuinely good things in it. Like the very first shot—Clementi in a café, sitting next to a plate-glass window in which we also see his reflection. Our very first glimpse of the film tells us quietly what it's about. (p. 257)