Review of Breathe In (2013) by Nick O — 02 Dec 2013

Is it a bitch getting out of Sundance? I don't know. Does not ever really being theatrically released at all beat being later dismissed as faux-festival fluff? Either way, "Breathe In" got royally fucked when it came to distribution. I can see why this movie would never expand to any place outside a handful of metropolitan janitor's closets, but it could have at least had a nice home on VOD. It's very akin to Lynn Shelton's "Touchy Feely", in that it by design favors an atmosphere of insular and ordinary. In less kind words, "Breathe In" opts for a moody sense of vague wandering over the foundation of an actual plot. Your call whether or not it's aimless.

Drake Doremus had a nice little debut feature with 2011's "Like Crazy", and he follows it up with a sort of "Lolita"-meets-"Martha Marcy May Marlene" that's less narratively ambitious or terribly experimental than that description sounds. I don't fault the guy for trying, especially when he casts game players like Guy Pearce and Amy Ryan as a quiet couple who take an English exchange student ("Like Crazy's" Felicity Jones) into their New York home. Everybody is fine-tuned enough to Doremus' enterprise of total character solipsism, but by the thirty-minute mark I have an inclination a good number of audience members would already have walked out. The first hour of this 96-minute film is DREADFULLY slow; only in the final twenty minutes does it look like "Breathe In" is going anywhere, and even then it ultimately really doesn't.

Doremus is talented, but he's by no means an auteur. Pearce and the lovely Jones form a halfhearted romantic bond that'd be weightier if the movie they were in was actually ABOUT anything. If you can seek it out, or have any interest to at all, you'll probably get at least something out of "Breathe In". Its trouble beyond that is its tonally confused footing has it ring as barely a flash in the pan. (61/100).