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BREATHE Send This Review to a Friend
Actress Mélanie Laurent in her off-screen role as director is giving us a portrait of an intense, suffocating friendship between two female students in “Breathe,” which she wrote with Julien Lambroschini based on a novel of the same title by Anne-Sophie Brasme.
In this French import Joséphine Japy excellently plays the up-tight Charlie, a 17-year-old student who is bored and coping with a breathing problem that at moments requires use of a booster device. One can take the title as a metaphorical description of the stifling she feels in her life.
Lou De Laâge engagingly portrays Sarah, a spirited transfer student, who is intriguing to Charlie because of Sarah’s tantalizingly flamboyant demeanor and liberated behavior with boys. The two become close. There is an undercurrent of sexuality and desire on the part of Charlie, although the emotional and physical closeness never develops into an actual sexual relationship, but it almost does.
The sullen Charlie becomes deeply resentful at Sarah’s casual behavior toward her. At one moment Sarah can be affectionate, and the next dismissive and self-centered, as she pays more attention to a casual acquaintance of the moment.
We can sense that this relationship between Charlie and Sarah can come to no good, but may not realize to what extent. Charlie is in need of breathing space and Sarah has no clue as to the depth of upset building up in Charlie’s psyche.
Supporting characters are well-played and Laurent shows a sure directorial hand as the film builds carefully toward its climax, which may leave an audience shaken but also frustrated at the turn the film takes with its abrupt ending and Charlie’s symbolic respiratory easing. A Film Movement release. Reviewed September 9, 2015.
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