BREATHLESS: NOW

Paris, 1960s. Michel, in his late twenties, is unemployed, a rogue, womanizer, pickpocket and car thief, a hedonist with a cigarette constantly dangling from his mouth; he is without money and serious plans for the future, modelling himself on the film persona of Humphrey Bogart. When he steals a car in Marseille and shots a policeman by accident, he finds himself in a grave conflict with the law. Just before that, in Nice, he has fallen in love with Patricia, an American student and aspiring journalist, who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris, mostly living on the money sent by her parents. Michel follows Patricia to Paris and tries to talk her into escaping with him to Rome. Patricia is ambivalent, reluctant to fall in love. Although she and Michel are worlds apart, they soon end up in a whirl of desire and evasion. Although the police are closing in on Michel, he does not bother – he keeps enjoying wild car rides and the taste of Patricia's lips. The frantic race will stop only when he is left breathless. Forever. The play is based on the cult film Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard (1960). Breathless, together with François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour, both released a year earlier, brought international acclaim to the French nouvelle vague. Godard's feature-length debut, whose first draft plot was written by Truffaut, is the definitive manifesto of the French New Wave: a striking, fresh and prophetic classic