A mediocre and predictable plot trajectory imprisons and counteracts fine performances in the flawed Breathe In. Guy Pearce stars as a bored suburban music teacher and father longing for his youth, when he played in a band and led a more intense life in the city. Amy Ryan is his wife, and Felicity Jones is a British exchange student and prodigious pianist who enters their home. The (creepy? romantic?) dynamic which will unfold is clear from an early scene: driving from the airport to their home, the well-intentioned Ryan hamstrings and teases Pearce with pragmatism while Jones stares at him from behind, her eyes alight with old-soul understanding of the pain felt by this hipster-turned-square. Pearce and Jones, both talents of the highest order, deliver fine performances. A type of masculine, untidy melancholy is a note he can play with ease. So is reserved, yet seductive elegance for her. And the film has an apt aesthetic, with its quiet, tree-lined streets and a general color palette of muted and overcast blues, greens, and greys.

Despite these qualities, the film frustrated me with its insistence on traversing a route of forbidden romance; what was at once amusing, exciting, and perverse in Lolita decades ago is now rather bland and generic in hyper-earnest independent films such as this. So much time is devoted here to building quote-unquote sexual tension and then acting out the uncomfortable scenes of almost-touching and almost-kissing and then later the inevitable post-canoodle fallout, complete with much smashing of household ceramics. It is by and large time wasted. I would respect the film so much more if it constructed a fresher thematic sandbox for its gifted cast to play in. Groan-worthy lines of dialogue such as, "Don't let fear become your profession" and "It's hard to know how to be...truly free" do not help the film's case. Nor do a few instances of extreme contrivance, the most egregious of which finds a key character randomly chancing upon the Guy Pearce character's liaison with the exchange student in the forest.

C

The story is all rather low-key but the performances are terrific and it's handsomely made. Watching this today as it was pouring rain outside really, really added to the gloomy upstate New York setting. I had to stop for a second to remember if it actually rained in the film just now. And I don't think it actually did. But the weather here just accompanied this film so well. Anyway, this was nothing profound. Might be a little too low-key for some. But I was definitely engrossed. I'd give it a solid 7/10 (B).

There is definitely enough tension as to what is about to come that is built up in the film but the end resolution I felt was a little too much "to the book" and could have been more gripping. Pearce and Jones though are fantastic and make the film definitely worth watching.