The steady stream of “Stranger Things”-inspired nostalgia-tinged childhood dramas seems to be accelerating rather than receding. Breath is the newest addition to the cavalcade of such screen cultural products to hit the US market. It is unusual enough in its setting, atmosphere and details to make the journey through the regular coming-of-age tropes enjoyable and worthwhile. It also does not annoyingly aim for any lofty sociopolitical aims either, a goal that sometimes weighs down similar films. Instead, the moral of Breath is generic life-coach schlock, a refreshingly low bar as far as aspirations go and one that lets the film be what it is, which is simple amusing entertainment.
Breath follows 13-year-old Pikelet (Samson Coulter), an awkward boy in a dusty coastal backwater of Australia in the mid-‘70s. He and his friend Loonie (Ben Spence) spend their days pedaling around the dirt roads of the area looking for trouble or a thrill. They find one when Loonie crashes his bike after grabbing onto a passing truck; they hitch a ride with the strangers in the truck, who are headed for the rocky coastline just outside town. The strangers are surfers; Pikelet and Loonie had never seen surfing and are instantly transfixed by the prospect of catching a wave.
Surfing becomes their singular obsession. They perform myriad odd jobs around town until they can afford two dingy used boards from one of the guys in the surfing camp on the beach. And then they surf every day. Their enthusiasm and gritty determination draw the eye of Sando (Simon Baker, who also directs and co-wrote the film), a middle-aged man with an impressive quiver of surfboards and a nice house near the shore. Sando takes in Pikelet and Loonie as his protégés.
From here, Breath slows down its pace and simply inhabits the boys’ growing surfing habit. They carefully build their skill and escalate the scale of waves that they seek out. Sando is an international surfing legend with ambitions to be the first surfer to systematically explore the breaks off Indonesia and he works to prepare the two boys to join him in the endeavor. In this middle section, Breath does an excellent job of capturing the feeling of isolation of living in some dirt-nothing town (I say this as a native of a town of 52 souls in rural Kentucky) in the middle of nowhere and the pure ecstasy that comes from something that promises escape from such a dull, provincial existence. Adventure in general is irresistible to boys in such a setting; when that adventure has the allure of surfing next to a living legend, the appeal rises exponentially.
Pikelet does not take as readily to the risks inherent to big wave surfing as Loonie. Moreover, his eyes occasionally linger a bit too long on Eva (Elizabeth Debicki), Sando’s hobbled-by-a-ski-accident wife. When Sando finally absconds to Indonesia, it is with only Loonie in tow. Pikelet feels betrayed… and so does Eva. Pikelet’s ecstatic pursuit of escape from the mindless toils of rural Australian life takes on a new, surf-less tenor while Sando is Indonesia.
Breath is perhaps too conventionally crafted. The direction is fine, if plain, and the cinematography is equally competent yet unremarkable, even though the ocean is a major component of the film. There is the obligatory voiceover narration from an adult Pikelet that accomplishes nothing from a filmmaking perspective beyond directly referencing similar “those were the days” films about growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Yet, the story is just original enough—there are not that many films about surfing or rural Australia available to US viewers—to keep Breath interesting and energized.
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