Breathe In (2013)

Fantastic!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I could watch Guy Pearce in anything but didn't finish this. Director kept us from involvement with characters by intrusive camerawork and faltering conversations.

This is the story of a suburban family that takes in a foreign exchange student from the UK and how their worlds got turned upside-down in that time. The fact is, their worlds were already crashing in around them, but no one was willing to notice anything beyond the board game playing, family picture taking facade they put on. The teenage daughter had already had sex with a guy she had a crush on but wouldn't commit to her because he was too busy blabbing their business to everyone. The father was living a mundane life teaching instead of playing music. The mother seemed oblivious to any of the feelings the other two are having. The exchange student arrives, catches the eye of the daughter's crush, as well as her own father's. As the plot unfolds, I was able to predict all of the major happenings that occurred. The daughter's self- destructive, self- absorbed, alcohol induced over emotion led her to a serious car crash when she ends up losing it. The crush tries to hook up with the exchange student, and when she refuses, he smears her name across the school. And the wife smashes her cookie jar collection when she finally realizes what's going on under her nose between her husband and this 18 year old girl. I found it quite contradicting that the husband finally gets the chair he wanted and the job he has been dreaming of, and is willing to throw it all away the next day by running away with a teenager he had essentially just met. It's hard to see him in a good light when he is willing to do such a thing to his family. I kept desperately hoping that the connection between the leads was more of a father daughter connection, because she had lost her dad and uncle, and his own daughter wasn't into music. My hopes were dashed when they became physical and i found it creepy and unnecessary. they could have gone a totally different way with this and made the film more touching and inspiring. Instead, it bread negativity with no solution. Having said all of that, the scenery was absolutely beautiful, and the score was magnificent. The acting was also superb. Each actor played their character to a T and it was very believable. However, wish I hadn't wasted my time with this one.

One of the problems with casting a person for a teenage role who is actually way older, is that you get an inaccurate depiction of what a teen is really like. This is true in terms of both looks and emotion.I admit that I've met some 18 year old girls who seemed way older. But I never saw them deal with life crises. I bet they would not have dealt with them the way a 28 year old would. Felicity Jones was much older in real life than the character she played. In reality the male lead was only 16 years older than her. But he is probably supposed to be about 25 years older.The attractive young woman who shares the male lead's interests and passions is a symbol of the disappointment of his life. His wife cannot relate to him, and perhaps never could. She was probably just humoring his musical lifestyle when they were young.Ironically, the young girl will probably grow up to be just like his wife. She'll want a house in the country and a husband with a steady conventional job.Not much happens in this film. It is all innuendo and atmosphere. But both of those are done beautifully. Upstate New York looks exquisite, the shots of the beautiful young woman are artistically pleasing, and the classical music fits the scenes perfectly.Credit is due to the actors for portraying longing, and stifling dissatisfaction with aplomb. You feel their desperation without them saying much. Having said that, I would have appreciated at least one monologue from the male about how he really feels. If he could take down his guard for a few minutes and let it all out, that would have made the film. You could still keep all the subtle moments, but let him break down once and tell us something about how it feels.My favorite scene is when the neighbor guy cavalierly says what is on both their minds. That was refreshing. He simply states that his neighbor has a hot young thing living with him and asks him what it's like. Then he says that it would be great to be young again.This was a piece of self-indulgent art, but certainly worth viewing if you have the patience. Great cinematography, stellar acting, and plenty of mood music.

Keith Reynolds was a rock musician when he was younger but now aspires to be first cellist in a local symphony orchestra in suburban Westchester. That way, he can quit his regular job as a music teacher at the local high school. He's a grim-faced sort of guy who never laughs (nor do any of the other characters in 'Breathe In', a lugubrious melodrama starring Guy Pearce as a wayward musician). He's married to his non-descript wife, Megan and they have a daughter, Lauren, who attends the same high school Keith teaches in.The Reynolds decide to sponsor a British exchange student, Sophie, for a semester, and right off the bat you can guess where the plot is going. Sophie, only 18 years old, is the prescribed home wrecker. The only question that remains is what kind of home wrecker is she? Perhaps a demon seed who ends up murdering a principal or two in the household? Not quite. We finally find out that Sophie is a near genius pianist who demonstrates her extreme competence, when Keith insists that she introduce herself by playing a classical piece before his high school class.After that it's a long drag as Keith and Sophie grow closer to each other. Eventually, they find themselves cuddling by a lake in a local park and there's finally one rather chaste kiss. Much to daughter Lauren's chagrin, she spies her errant father canoodling with the sultry exchange student. Since Lauren was also rejected by her first time sex flame, the combination of the two bad actors (daddy and ex-boyfriend) is too much for her to handle. She gets behind the wheel of her car after swigging some alcohol, and gets into a possibly fatal accident as she veers off the road into the woods, to avoid an oncoming truck.Of course this dark moment at the end of Act 2, occurs precisely around the same time Keith lands the job as principal cellist in the orchestra and is playing for the first time in the big seat. He's also decided to run off with the young Sophie but just as he meets her, he learns of Lauren's accident.After Megan trashes the house after realizing that Keith has run off, she meets him at the hospital, where she gives him a decidedly negative reception. Fortunately, director Drake Doremus doesn't go as far as to kill off the daughter, and make this a real heavy-handed tragedy. Instead, poor Sophie gets a double dose of bad stares from both Keith and Megan when they return home and her days in America have decisively come to an end.David Lee Dallas of Slant Magazine perhaps puts it best in his review: "Breathe In masquerades as a sensitive character study, seemingly high-brow because it's so low-key, but underneath that veneer is an inert, thinly plotted melodrama premised on trite characterizations that would be offensive if they weren't so absurd."Part of Breath In's problem is that most of the dialogue feels like it's improvised. Indeed, director Doremus worked from a 60 page outline and not a full-blown script. After numerous takes, Doremus has been quoted as saying that the actors simply "knew what to say." Some may find that inventive, but I do not.As Breathe In plods along, one finds oneself mildly interested in how the story resolves itself. But once all is said and done, this earnest little tale of infidelity proves to be ordinary as they come.