Breathless

More than twenty years after Jean-Luc Godard helped put the French New Wave on the international map with his 1960 debut—a classic of outlaw cinema in every sense of the word—director Jim McBride and co-writer L.M. Kit Carson served up this 1983 remake in an American key. The pair relocate the story from Paris to Los Angeles and swap the characters' nationalities: the gangster movie-loving French thief of the original is now callow American Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere), who loves Jerry Lee Lewis and Silver Surfer comics, and the girl, Monica Poiccard (Valérie Kaprisky), is a French exchange student at USC. When Jesse kills a cop (accidentally?), he tries to convince Monica to run off with him to Mexico to evade capture. The filmmakers update the fugitive-lovers-on-the-run narrative with oversaturated colors, a high-energy soundtrack of classic rock and contemporary punk rock songs, and lots of steamy sex and nudity. Gere is quite good as the narcissistic, emotionally immature, not-too-bright hood, but Kaprisky struggles to make an impression beyond her beauty (and willingness to get naked in scene after scene). This Breathless never captures the zeitgeist of its era the way that Godard's original did, but while it was largely panned on release, in retrospect it is surprisingly entertaining on its own terms. Making its Blu-ray debut, this is a strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)