Breathe In (2013)

Enid: You know what my number one fantasy used to be?

Seymour: What?

Enid: I used to think about one day, just not telling anyone, and going off to some random place. And I’d just disappear. And they’d never see me again. Did you ever think about stuff like that?

+++

Emily Dickinson wrote a line that has stuck with me ever since I read it. “The heart wants what it wants when it wants it, or else it doesn’t care.” Gene Wilder referred to that quotation in his autobiography Kiss Me Like a Stranger as a sort of definitive description of the logic of passion. Or the reasoning behind the lack thereof.

Breathe In premiered at the Sundance Film Festival at the start of last year and was directed by Drake Doremus. I stumbled upon this out of admiration for his previous film, Like Crazy (also starring Felicity Jones), which mesmerized me so much that I watched it from beginning to end right after my first viewing. Naturally, Breathe In was an easy choice for a Sunday evening, and I was encouraged by the fact that I knew very little of the plot (always a plus). I knew Guy Pearce played a teacher and Felicity Jones’ character was an exchange student who moves in with his family for the semester. I knew there was a hinting that they would have an affair, but that was the extent of what I knew. So that is the extent of what I will address in this review, and leave the rest of the details for you to unfold for yourself.

There’s something about the way the wind moves in this film. Doremus has a distinct visual style of lonely spaces: an empty chair in the center of an empty room, leaves rustling on a hidden path, rusty swings on a playground used for nothing anymore, by no one. The music was primarily piano preludes, minor keys, heavy, slow, steady as rain. It was interesting that the main character played the cello of all instruments that Doremus could have chosen because, to me, it is the voice of longing. It conveys such a rich, full atmosphere of deep emotion that seems to be searching desperately for reciprocation. Connection. An echo. The cello produces such a one-sided sound.

So we have Keith and Sophie. They are discontent in similar ways, and, really, in the ways we all are. During my viewing of a handful of scenes midway through, I kept coming back to one in Ghost World in which Enid has a conversation with Seymour about disappearing. Wanting a fresh start, a clean slate. Beginning again anywhere but here. I want you to steal me away is the wish that characterizes this desire, this longing, and defines it. Wouldn’t it be so much better, she thinks, if I could just get in my car and drive? Tell no one. Pack a suitcase. Leave behind familiarity, routines, repetition, walking through that front door. Breathe In does not answer that question, but the film explores what fuels it. The heart wants what it wants when it wants it, or else it doesn’t care.

Breathe In was not brilliant or groundbreaking or even unpredictable, really. It will be a story you’ve heard before and seen many times. You will recognize the characters in it; perhaps you will even see a glimpse of yourself too. So why watch it? Because there is something about that longing, the tone of it, the weight of it, in all of us. There’s something about how we want to be stolen away, even from a happy life, even from precious contentment.

And there’s just something about the way the wind moves.