Breathe In

Breath In is a movie from Drake Doremus, winner of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Like Crazy. This film explores the themes of settling for a life you didn't think you would have and the passion that was in one's life and then fades away. This story is not wholly believable although well portrayed by skilled actors such as Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones. Pearce played the role well but you never walk away believing he was once a passionate artist. You mostly sympathize with him because of his downer and nag of a wife played by Amy Ryan. Their daughter played by Mackenzie Davis is just too tall and lanky to be taken seriously as a high school student and it is quite distracting.

Thrown into this family is the beautiful Felicity Jones. She appears as an exchange student from England visiting to take piano lessons at the school where Pearce is a teacher. Instantly her beauty and ability strike a chord in the sleepy Pearce's character and it awakens the passion he has missed.

Trying to convince his wife to move back to the city falls flat and it is then that Pearce's character turns to Jones' for the missing parts. Nothing gets too lurid between them but you can guess where it will lead. Everything blows up in the end and life is left passionless and accepted.

I give this movie 2 thumbs up and would recommend it as a rental for sure.

Official synopsis:

2012, 98 minutes, color, U.S.A.

As summer turns to fall, music teacher Keith Reynolds privately reminisces about his days as a starving artist in the city. While his wife, Megan, and daughter, Lauren, look forward to Lauren’s final year of high school, Keith clings to those evenings he’s asked to sub as a cellist with a prestigious Manhattan symphony. When Megan decides the family should host foreign exchange student Sophie, the British high school senior soon rekindles an impetuous aspect of Keith’s personality.

Drake Doremus, winner of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Like Crazy, reunites with actress Felicity Jones and cowriter Ben York Jones for this passionate ensemble drama of family dysfunction. Ditching the hand-held aesthetic of his past works, Doremus conceives a grander story of love and heartache, only heightened by his lead character’s symphonic avocation, while maintaining his keen eye for intimate performance.

Director: Drake Doremus

Screenwriters: Drake Doremus, Ben York Jones

Producers: Jonathan Schwartz, Andrea Sperling, Steven Rales, Mark Roybal

Coproducers: Kathryn Dean, Michael Pruss

Cinematographer: John Guleserian

Editor: Jonathan Alberts

Production Designer: Katie Byron

Composer: Dustin O'Halloran

Principal Cast: Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Amy Ryan, Mackenzie Davis