Review of Breathless (2009) by Jackson M — 02 Nov 2012

An interesting little film that baffled the hell out of me in the end.

A car thief with numerous girls scattered around for money and sex makes the idiotic decision to take one of his hot cars at high speed. He is chased by the police and murders one, leading to him lying low the remainder of the film.

During this time, he tried to convince one of the girls to be the Bonnie to his Clyde. However, he also admits that he loves her for no apparent reason, wants to sleep with her, and thinks that she's stupid.

The girl hold up her end of this idiocy as well as she seems to mostly have no other look except the empty headed, wide-eyed doe look. This is capitolized on as she seems to think it normal for the man to keep showing up with new cars. Eventually, even she figures it out and has to decide whether she wants to be Bonnie. She gives it a trial run where nothing really happens before deciding, seemingly on a whim, to call the police and tell them where the man is.

Not to be outplayed, the man decides he doesn't care and want to be caught, so he doesn't have to keep running and allows a situation to occur leading to his death.

I find this film greatly frustrating because Jean-Paul Belmondo seems perfectly capable of doing much more than he is allowed to here. He also has a raw charisma that really meshed well with the beauty and charm of Jean Seberg.

In the end, I felt that I cared more about what was going on with the characters than the story did. I'm not sure if this is a difference of cultural and time ideals or if this was just poor writing.

Either way, the film looked really nice and had some really nice moments. With a better story and a better resolution, I may have been able to enjoy the film on a level that so many other seem to have.