Review of Breathless (2009) by Benjamin M — 17 Jul 2016

A twitchy, self-consciously quirky film, Jean-Luc Godard's premiere feature has gone on to influence a wide variety of films, and still stands an entertaining, light-on-content, heavy-on-style little romp that, thankfully, seemed entirely unawares of how much it would end up influencing cinema, and therefore feels gratefully devoid of pompous posturing or illusions of grandeur, but is, in the end, more flashy spangles then depth of content.

Clocking in at a mere 90 minutes, Breathless is a film that lives up to its name by keeping a brisk, kinetic pace, and keeping things simple and stripped down to the bare bones. It's plot is minimalist, with a lackadaisical thief named Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who, after stealing a car, manages to shoot a police officer, sparking a manhunt. Determined not to go to jail, he manages to hook up with his ex-girlfriend, an American student and aspiring journalist, Patricia (Jean Seberg), who seems to treat him with a stand-off aloofness. The film then follows his attempts to seduce her to run away with him to Italy, before she eventually decides to inform the police about his whereabouts. The cops arrive, and while a friend of Michel insists he take a gun, going as far as to toss it into the street for Michel to pick up, Michel refuses, seemingly viewing jail a better option. He goes to pick up the gun, only managing to get shot, stumbling several dozen meters before collapsing, dying from his wound.

Godard keeps the minimalistic, barely-there plotline moving by his innovative use of jump-cut, combined with a general sense of laid back irreverence. It's not a film that takes itself seriously, nor does it seem to feel it has any grander message. The conversations the characters have about the nature of love, and human relationships, feel oddly tongue in cheek, almost as if Godard is making fun of the trope of intense philosophical musings. His camera work is loose and unpolish, hand-held camera following everyone around, either letting the scene play out with minimal edits, or instead hopping through time moment by moment, to give the illusion of the abrupt passage of time.

The acting from Seberg and Belmondo is sedate and unpretentious. They feel real and naturalistic, and their interactions have a lazy, familial chemistry between them. It helps tie the film together, especially since there isn't much real plot to speak of, more just a sequence of loosely connected events, blended with café-hipster musings on romance and love.

And, in a way, that's how this film feels. While undoubtedly innovative and enjoyable, one can still get an undeniable sense that Godard is trying just a mite too hard too be different and to break cinematic conventions. There's always a sense that Godard brings up an thematic idea, or a motif, only to intentionally and deliberately subvert it and deconstruct it, if only for the sake of deconstructing it. It's so minimalist, it just ends up feeling like it really doesn't have anything to say, since there's so little in the way of real plot or character development.

Compare, for example, Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece, Persona, a film that is equally deconstructive and genre-busting, but with the added depth of Bergman's disturbingly intense meditation on Jungian psychology. The moments of deconstruction and fourth wall breaking (such as the film literally grinding to a halt and exploding, or the smash edits of disturbing imagery), feel like a visual interpretation of the character's psychological state, and as visual metaphor for the themes of how humans consistently put on artificial masks and personalities in order to better keep up appearances.

Meanwhile, in Breathless, Godard seems to twist and bend the cinematic medium around simply because he can, and I'm not sure how it reflects on the narrative or thematic elements, mostly because the narrative and themes are so thinly drawn.

But, nonetheless, the film is entertaining, and, thanks to the short running time and fast, hyper-caffeinated pace, doesn't feel burdensome or like a waste of time. If you approach it as a pure popcorn film that just so happened to choose to take a deconstructive route, then it's a gem. Just don't try to read subtext into it when there really isn't much there.

I suppose 3 out of 5 will suffice. Entertaining, but ultimately ephemeral.