A celebration of life and love
Breathe (M, 118mins), directed by Andy Serkis ★★★1⁄2
Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy’s chemistry is what lifts this surprisingly inert period drama.
The pair exude real passion in bringing to life Robin and Diana Cavendish, an adventurous English couple whose meet-cute at a cricket game results in marriage a short time later.
However, their whirlwind romance is seemingly stopped in its tracks when Robin is struck down with polio while working as a tea broker in Kenya. Only expected to last a few months, he shuts down, urging Diana to leave him in hospital ‘‘to rot’’. However, there’s no way his pregnant wife is going to acquiesce to that demand. ‘‘It wouldn’t look very good and apparently I love you,’’ she reasons.
Determined to find a way to restore some quality of life, Diana enlists the support of friend and inventor Teddy Hall (Hugh Bonneville) to come up with a way of making her beloved firstly able to leave the hospital then mobile.
However, there are those determined that such behaviour should not be tolerated, lest they inspire or offer false hope to others. ‘‘You’ll be dead in two weeks,’’ one doctor spits.
Perhaps its not surprising that the acting should be the best part of the feature-directing debut of a man best known for performance capture. Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings and modern Planet of the Apes franchise) certainly draws the best out of his cast, which also includes two truly scene-stealing performance from twin Tom Hollanders (playing Diana’s siblings Bloggs and David Blacker). Serkis also does a terrific bait-and-switch job, opening the film as if we’re in for a sweeping, old school romance before lowering the boom with Robin’s rapid change in health.
But despite a number of memorable moments and impressing acting, something about Breathe just seems a little laboured. Perhaps the material feels just a little too close to 2015’s The Theory of Everything in terms of story and style, or maybe it’s because it tries a little too hard to ‘‘show up the blinkered attitudes of those working in the health system’’, but it all just feels a little too shallow and once-over-lightly to really compel.
Which is pity, because there’s a lot to like about this lovingly crafted celebration of life and love.