Le souffle (2001)

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   Siskoid

   Damien Odoul's Le souffle (released as Deep Breath in English, though literally meaning "The Breath") is a French black and white indie picture about an idle youth spending time on his uncle's small farm. As a slice of lice, it felt a little boring, especially when we spent time with the adults and their impenetrable French argot (non-French speakers may have the benefit of subtitles). But Odoul is also a poet and by the second act, shifts gears to reveal some of the film's poetics, sometimes intercutting the action with surreal images. And once you clue in, there's an awful lot to unpack. There's definitely lamb/wolf phraseology in the film, with our teenage boy associating with the latter, wanting to be gansta and to lose his innocence in order to avoid or ignore his feelings of abandonment and humiliation. The breath of the title may be the breath of life - as death is certainly a theme - but manifests in the heavy breathing of anxiety, fear, drunkenness and violence. There's also a play between the crude world of the farm, and the heightened society of the "castle" where the kid's girlfriend lives, something he can yearn for, but never quite reach. Fair warning, the film begins with the onscreen butchering of a live animal, and the boy's cruelty to several barnyard animals while not life-threatening, is still something that could have been faked, but wasn't. For some, this will be reason enough not to watch the film, and I would not blame them. 2001 is too late for refusing to compromise on that part of one's vision. 6 years ago

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