Amateur Recommendation Hour: Breathe

Today’s recommendation is a CRIMINALLY underrated film that absolutely deserves your attention. I do seem to like recommending works that I find either under-appreciated or flat out unknown. I suppose that's because I feel less of an inclination to talk about works that already have a fair amount of discourse about already and prefer to include my voice and give attention to "lesser-known" or at least less talked about pieces.

Breathe, directed by Melanie Laurent, is a 2014 French teenage drama film about Charlie (nickname for Charlene), a 17-year-old girl tortured by doubt, is thrilled when she becomes friends with Sarah, a new student who recently moved from Nigeria, but when Sarah tires of Charlie, their relationship takes an ominous turn.

The cinematography is remarkable with a few standout frames that, for me at least, were just about perfectly composed. The dialogue is extremely naturalistic and delivered in such a way that at times made me feel like I wasn’t watching a film with a script, but rather was actually peeking into these people’s lives without them knowing. It is a very grounded film in many respects but especially in its tone, never feeling overly melodramatic or contrived with its drama. The performances are outstanding, in particular by that of Josephine Japy who plays the well-written and layered lead role of Charlie.

My personal interpretations of this work are that it is about our society’s perchance for encouraging innocent adolescent lives being thrust into adulthood before they are truly ready for all that entails. Adulthood may be fun and fascinating to someone so close to it, but it also brings with it pain and heartache that lasts far beyond the trivialities of high school dramas. When the time is right to let go of our youth, it may be difficult but in order to flourish, we must do so with an open mind.

This may not be the last Melanie Laurent-directed film I give a recommendation to. I certainly hope not at the very least, provided I'm able to track down more of her directorial work. I was seriously impressed with her direction/writing and I look forward to seeing more of the films she had a creative hand in. Even the films she's acted in too.