Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) tells Patricia (Jean Seberg) a story of a bus driver who fell in love with a young woman. In order to catch her attention he stole $5 million and took her away on holiday where they spent the cash in three days. After the money was gone he told her what he had done. Instead of being angry or frightened, she fell in love with him and joined him and his new lifestyle as con-men and thieves. Michel tells her this to gauge her reaction as he hopes for a similar reaction from her.
Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless is a story of love and not much else, as it tries to fill a mold of a thief and cop-killer as he tries to make a break for Italy, with as much talk about sex as could be squeezed in. Mostly, however, I saw this criminal personality as more of a way to make sure that our poor central characters were able to make ends meet, provide fragmented bits of drama, and create a character-type to contrast the utterly charming Patricia. Without this added element the entire story would essentially have revolved around Michel trying to sleep with her, and if that were the case I think I would have stopped watching. It tires me endlessly to watch or listen to people make sex an important topic of conversation or an act that in its very nature creates conflict. I find sex as natural as running, but you don't watch many films with arguments stemming from one person not wanting to take a jog with another.
There are some instances in which sex has been used as an effective tool to cope with external issues or as a power ploy. I am thinking in particular of Last Tango in Paris, in which Marlon Brando's character has raw, animal sex with a complete stranger in order to distract him from the pain he feels having recently lost his wife to suicide. This catharsis creates a dependency on the girl which keeps him coming back for more and lewder sexual acts. I could justify sex becoming the central object in that story as its purpose held some greater intent then carnal gratification. This is not the case of Breathless I am sorry to say. Sex was both the ends and the means of the relationship.
Enough of that. Michel, a womanizer who lives spontaneously and somewhat recklessly, has unintentionally fallen in love with Patricia who he has known for about a month, slept with once, and has gotten pregnant (we hear this last information once, and then it is never mentioned again. It made the end of the movie unfulfilling for me). On his way into Paris he is startled by a police-officer which hijacking a car and shoots him dead. The rest of the skeletal plot involves him trying to track down a certain Antoine who owes him $5000 so that he, and hopefully Patricia with him, could escape for the border. Two hindrances to his plan include his inability for several days to locate the man, and Patricia's complete ignorance to Michel's lifestyle.
I don't feel nervous saying that she eventually does find out and that it is this knowledge that challenges their relationship--we know right from the onset that this was an inevitability. The second act of the film then, is the development of the relation that will be challenged, and it is this act that stretched my patience to the limit. It involves the French being as stereotypically interested in sex as any negative stereotype was ever reinforced. All of the characters blatantly ask each other for sex as casually as they would ask for a baguette and Chesterfield cigarette. At one point Michel says to Patricia that he wants to sleep with her again, "It means I love you." People don't talk this way, people don't act this way; it was very frustrating.
There were some clever cinematic shots and unusual editing, as is typical in French New Wave, and the players made choices that I actor found very inspiring. All of these things, however, could not redeem its incredibly tedious plot and insufferable male lead. I don't care if it is an "important" film, it is French art-house at its most dangerously boring, and for that reason I think I will leave it--and its director--to the hipsters.
1.5/4
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