YOU CAN SEE SCOTLAND FROM MY HOUSE

One of the most impressive experiences of being in love, is feeling your energy raise and fall: at some moments, you feel that you could turn the world upside down, and at others, you can barely do anything but lay and sigh. The perception of the "ups" usually prevails, and I suspect some people become addicted to this "love high". I am not either talking about any new age kind of energy or about the chemical energy you get from food, but about this resolution that make us go and do something that looks difficult.

When confronted with a difficult problem, the first thing a person usually does, is gathering this resolution with a deep breath, perhaps also stretching the arms and back, and go for it. Watching the way of breathing is, actually, a very accurate way of observing how much of this resolution, or energy, there is to accomplish any task. Being in love probably involves certain ways of breathing.

In Breathless, this petty crook Michel, a Bogart-like cyincist character, finds himself exhausted with his life, but is also in love with Patricia. If I saw the movie again, I would pay more attention to his smoking, a constant through the movie (it is impressive how people smoke in old movies). He never loses the "cool", but his life of stealing, running and hiding is very demanding one, and his smoking gets very nervous at some points.

Patricia, on the other hand, leads an interesting life, at a more or less constant pace, and is happy about it. She likes Michel very much, and is at some point caught in his race, which I get the impression that she also likes. But she does not need the "love high". She is in a privileged position in that relation, with no necessity of any manipulation, which is a refreshing change from the female characters in most contemporary cinema.

Left aside my interpretation of the film, I would say that the characters are both really appealing: interesting people, with something to say, with cool attitudes that make us envy them a little. And, of course, it is a very sexy movie in a nonconventional and (sadly?) nonexplicit way. It is a movie about love. And about breath.