BREATHLESS

“Cinema repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce.” - theriverjordan

Widely dismissed upon release for daring to remake Jean-Luc Godard's sacred New Wave classic, Jim McBride's BREATHLESS takes the original's fascination with American popular culture and pushes it into a state of complete delirium. Where Godard found romance in the cool detachment of Parisian gangsters, McBride plunges headfirst into the overheated fantasies of rock and roll, comic books, American machismo, and the terrible decisions people make in the name of love.

Richard Gere plays Jesse Lujack, a car thief, cop killer, Jerry Lee Lewis fanatic, and quite possibly the most obnoxiously romantic man in Los Angeles. His idea of true love involves convincing a beautiful French student (Valérie Kaprisky) to abandon her entire life and run away with him to Mexico. Gere throws himself into the role with such reckless enthusiasm that it's sometimes difficult to tell whether Jesse is the coolest man alive or the biggest idiot in the world. Beneath all the swagger is a genuinely strange portrait of a man who has absorbed so much American popular culture that he can no longer distinguish between romantic devotion and performing the part of a romantic hero.

“It’s not just one of the great remakes but one of the great, largely unsung, American films of the 80s.” - Justin LaLiberty