‘Breathe’ Movie Review: The New Girl

Briefly, but admiringly, I want to take note of “Breathe,” a film directed by Mélanie Laurent, the French actress best known in this country for her performance as the vengeful theater owner in Quentin Tarrantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.” In this intimate yet ambitious drama, which the director and Julien Lambroschini adapted from a novel by Anne-Sophie Brasme, an emotionally insecure high-school girl, Charlie ( Joséphine Japy), falls under the spell of a new arrival, Sarah ( Lou de Laâge). In the setting of their suburban school, Sarah, who tel

ls exotic stories of recent life with her expat mother in Nigeria, strikes Charlie as a woman of the world, though also a lonely classmate who needs a friend.

Both perceptions come up for reconsideration in the course of an increasingly fraught relationship that takes dangerous turns. No need to discuss the direction of those turns, but I can tell you that Ms. Laurent’s direction is astute and economical, that both of the film’s young stars give fine performances, and that “Breathe” is a very good title for a film that ever so gradually takes your breath away.