Review of Breathless (2009) by Kalel J — 11 May 2008

Breathless is one of three films often considered the start of the French New Wave, that quirky little period of cinema history where film critics in France began to take the reigns of French cinema into their own hands by force, making cheap movies inspired by Hollywood and Italian Neorealism.

As a genre setting film, Breathless really establishes itself. From the first few minutes, it leaves the audience disoriented and perplexed even to this day. Godard uses jump cuts with overlapping sound, smashing a clear sense of time.

He clouds one of the most important parts of the film, the shooting of a police officer, with trick cutting and extreme close ups. He lets us wander off on long tracking shots with ambling dialogue and no clear point.

Breathless is a movie that breaks as many rules as possible, sometimes just for the sake of breaking them, and in its quirky rebellious spirit, it captures us. Sometimes a film breaks ground in an odd enough way that you can't help but love its stubborn mindset.

Because of the undertones in the film, we can more easily accept its loose plot and disorienting format. It doesn't hurt either that our leading character Michel is an exciting enigma, a mysterious criminal wandering around Paris like its his playground, hopelessly chasing an American girl that he can't get over for reasons slightly unclear to us.

Part of the charm of the French New Wave is the ambiguity, the way that things sometimes aren't perfectly clear to us. Michel hangs around Paris when he's a wanted man as if he has no purpose, the American girl denies and rejects him on the turn of a hat, leading to a conclusion that comes out of left field and is bogged down with specious reasoning on the parts of the characters.

Breathless is inventive, engaging, emotional, and more than deserving of its status as a classic.