Respire

If person like Sarah haven't not influenced yours life, than this movie can be to short to make reasonable impact on you. On other side, if yours life was strongly influenced by person like Sarah, then this movie could be a little bit to harsh. Before I met such a person I was unable to imagine that this kind of people could possible exist – it just does not make any sense. It was harsh to see this movie, but it is very good to be reminded in clear way that those people exist.

Respire is in all respect typical French drama. Apparently dry scenes, where you wonder if you're missing something. Restrained and subtle emotions that are confusing and irritating. A couple of dramatic plot twists. And beautiful, good, young actresses. I love it.

Josephine Japy as the introverted Charlie and Lou de Laage as extrovert Sarah are fine casted. Sarah can get under your skin. There are several moments in the film that I wanted to hit or hurt her. Charlie is often apathetic. I would kick her ass sometimes or shake her to wake her up. The crying and gasp scene at the end of the film is breath taking.

Although I'm far from the subject in age and I'm not a woman, I could easily empathize with Respire and it hit me several times like I was 17 again.

Mean Girls, My Summer of Love, and many other like films have covered well the lesbian coming-of-age film. Breathe, a knowing but ultimately clichéd version of that genre, is a classy take on the angst of being a teen girl at anytime and anyplace.

Almost 18-year old Charlie (Josephine Japy) falls for class newcomer, charismatic Sarah (Lou de Laage), but Charlie has a challenging time catching her elusive, sexy girlfriend. The beauty of the film is the gentle way director Melanie Laurent treats the roiling passions of youth—an obvious thematic element as the teacher at the beginning of the film lectures about the downside of excessive passion.

The dull, washed-out landscape mirrors the depressing state of the working class and teen emotional adjustments. Shots such as Charlie wading into the water and looking at the horizon may be formulaic but nevertheless are a variation of the symbolic language, a part of this emotional teen overdrive: She is in water potentially over her head, and she can only guess at the events' future implications.

The scene of Charlie and Sarah's kiss followed by a slap is spot on to suggest figuratively the ambivalent, volatile nature of early love, regardless of the orientation. As the title suggests, this stuff is normal heavy breathing for young folks. Breathe is a breath of fresh air in a formula well known for film and teens.

Tennyson understood and embraced the passion: "As tho' to breathe were life." Ulysses

The opening shots of 'Breathe' depict the tranquil facades of a quiet provincial town in Southern France as a new day dawns. A sensitive teenage girl called Charlie awakens to the habitual sounds of her parents arguing over the father's infidelities. By evening the marriage has disintegrated, and Charlie begins a new chapter in her struggle to avoid emotional stress.

Friendship with a charismatic new classmate called Sarah seems to offer Charlie some refuge from the painful aftermath of her family's break-up. The pair quickly develop a bond - but it soon becomes apparent Sarah shares some of Charlie's father's tendencies toward dishonesty and selfishness. Charlie's hunger for affection makes her especially susceptible to Sarah's deceptions and manipulations, and the relationship transforms into a quicksand of suspicion, jealousy and betrayal. The tension builds to a suffocating level as the shifting alliances of Charlie's teenage community increase her sense of isolation. 'Breathe' has some similarities to the American melodrama 'SWF', but it's far more credible, layered and well constructed. The film is also flawlessly written, directed and acted throughout, which makes its unexpected conclusion especially electrifying.

So she's a great director, too. I still haven't seen Laurent's 'Les Adoptes', but will close this gap asap after watching this her 2nd feature film. On the surface alone 'Respire' offers everything that's good about and expected from a social drama produced in Europe: hand- held camera, faithfulness to the light in which we'd see each scenery in real life, the effects being in the faces rather than in post production. The story being told by those faces as much as by film narrative, foremost by Josephine Japy's face. And the film unfolds as everything but mere surface. It's a very simple story, a school friendship going awry with tragic consequences, but Laurent's focus is on the subtleties of this relationship's evolution in each moment, and in collaboration with formidable acting this makes it a compelling watch. One small but powerful feature of film language that particularly delighted me was the smart use of slow motion: slow-mo is too often used in other films in a very annoying, bashful in-your-face way, here it is sparsely used, brief moments that follow the sole purpose of accentuating, and these moments work. The final result is a quiet, engaging, and ultimately disquieting and unsettling portrayal of the potency of emotional conflict at teen-age, of how unrehearsed and thus affecting, cruel and potentially dramatic and disastrous actions and reactions can be, especially if the pretence of adjustment hides the cracks of insufficient, failing or absent home support. Reacting increasingly becomes overreacting, foreboding eventual catastrophe; vulnerability takes vengeance on the greater vulnerability, and it is the containment of this greater vulnerability beating with the heart of the more reasoned protagonist that will in the end cease abruptly and give way to a surrender of control. The final take, as simple, precise and convincing as the entire film, is nothing short of ingenious. Praise be due to the performances of both leads, especially Josephine Japy (often reminding me of a young Binoche), as well as that of Isabelle Carre, playing Charlie's mother.