If you ever felt love punch you in the gut you understand Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is as timeless as Romeo and Juliet, as charming as the Beatles, as fresh as Avant-Garde, as hip as Bohemian Pairs, and as smart as science. Crime accentuates this love story as Michel, a highway killer with unknown motivation, enters the world of adorable Patricia.
Michel cannot live without Patricia while Patricia fluctuates between the desire for love and the desire for independence. The two exchange plenty of nonsensical flirtatious banter as Michel coerces Patricia to sleep with him again. Can you have love without this eroticism? Godard gives a philosophy of love with essay like precision in an interview that Patricia attends. Eroticism is a form of love and love is a form of eroticism. The two are inseparable. Michel craves the erotic element from Patricia because of love. He says the he has slept with two girls since her, both were a disappointment.
Godard departs from strict essay logic to a lifelike representation of love through editing. Love is not logical. Patricia tries to logically assess whether she loves Michel enough to loose her independence. She tests herself by informing the police of Michel’s whereabouts. She tells Michel what she did, and says that she must not love him because if she did then she would not treat him badly. He tells her that it is not logical to make up a test and then use that test as evidence against love. That is faulty logic by logic’s standards. Not to mention that love does not work with that precision.
The jump cuts and disrupted continuity work so well in Breathless because love has its own logic. The editing is not logical to life, it is not logical to movies, but it is logical to love for love stands above these. It can do whatever it wants. There is freedom in love. Michel finds this freedom with Patricia. He could run from the law, but instead he remains with Patricia and longs only to sleep. Patricia is his peace: what is tragic is that she will never know it.
One could say that Breathless comments on how women never know what they want. One could look negatively on Patricia’s flippant behavior. Patricia is a strong woman; she values her independence and does not need a man, whereas Michel is not exactly a moral exemplar. He must hide himself from the law, while Patricia stands boldly in a world of men. Patricia is the sole life force to Michel. Instead of an attack on women, Breathless is an insight to love and its fluctuations. Patricia understands how love can upset her independence; tragically she does not see the freedom of love. Michel understands what she never does.
Both characters have their flaws, which only add to this portrait of life. This movie teems with life because of the characters and because of their love. The love mixed with the element of crime works to show how love must steal time and live in the moment. That is what this film does; it lives in a fresh, hip way, and breathes with fleeting romantic love.
~Kristen Gorlitz