Charlene walks through a door frame, into the kitchen, her back to to the camera
the whole time. Sitting down at the table she hides behind a comically large coffee mug. Finally she unveils herself. The face is oval, perfect (actress Josephine Japy could be a young Virginie Ledoyen), yet -- without a word spoken -- we know she thinks herself unattractive. Her prefered name, the masculine "Charlie," only reinforced her seriousness, lack of sexual confidence. She is searching for herself.

New-in-town, uninhibited Sarah (Lou de Laage) blows into town and lays claim to Charlie's life. Sarah is staying with her aunt while her mother saves Africa. She must have picked this friend/victim with a saleswoman's radar. Dressing the quietly needy girl in her own shawls, painting her face, she wins her over, she must have done all this before. Charlie looks up to her new friend's wildness even as her casual boyfriend and her mother's affection get stolen one by one. When inevitably their relationship implodes (when Charlie discovers Sarah's family secret) Sarah threatens to kill her. Destroyed, Charlie slithers away in her feathered white coat -- a mortally wounded bird fallen from grace, her back to the camera once more. In the film's shocking finale she finds agency and her true self, and faces the camer like it is her mirror. Just like in director Melanie Laurent's stunning subsequent feature _Plonger_, self-discovery
coincides with death.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It took me a second viewing to appreciate the quiet greatness of _Breathe_.
(A word of thanks is due "Film Movement," still improperly chugging along after all these years; the DVD is released as their film-of-the-month series.) The actresses inevitably catch the eye first: Japy is is a transcendently soulful presence, while de Laage is a revelation. I barely recognize her from the nervous ingenue she played in _L'attesa_ or the determined nurse in her star-vehicle _The Innocents_. In _Breathe_ she is the imperious queen bee, her killer smile and confidence instantly lighting up a party, bringing out
the most vivacious and mean-spirited in us. A chameleon like that is rare in French cinema -- she could be the next great character actress, a Julie Depardieu. Isabelle Carre as Charlene's distracted, self-obsessed mother should
not go unmentioned.

But the real stars of the film are the director, editor, and cinematographer. After a languid beginning, and coinciding with Sarah's grand classroom ("negative infinity!"), the pace picks up. Director Laurent has a knack for cutting between scenes with contrasting emotional and color palettes while maintaining a soft, naturalistic progression; she thus effectively rounds out characters' nights and days, work and play, joys and sorrows in short order.
No one is completely a victim or a monster in her films. The painterly widescreen compositions are frequently breath-taking. The most memorable sequences cluster around their seaside vacation. Charlene walks alone on the beach, pensively testing the water; slowly she immerses herself, perched halfway
between land and sea. The camera jumps to another angle, this time stranding her astride the far horizon. Just then a plane roars overhead, ripping through the pastoral quiet, a harbinger of the strife ahead. It is the pilot she knows from last year and is sweet on; he will soon be scooped up by Sarah. The extraordinarily evocative sequence frames Charlene at the thresholds of change and adulthood. Later on a skein of migratory birds break rank like shattered glass. Cut to a candle-lit dinner scene, the animated conversations and deep amber shadows resembling a Caravaggio religious portrait: linking Charlene's fortune to antiquity, perhaps to all of human-kind ... _Breathe_ features no music at all, except in the disco scenes and during the end credits. But one can legitimately claim that the whole film is music.


(for A.)

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