InCinemas SG

Opening Date

18 Jan 2018

Rating

PG13 Some Mature Content

内容只宜十三岁及以上

Runtime

118 mins

Language

English with Chinese subtitles

Genre

Drama

Director

Andy Serkis

Cast

Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Diana Rigg,Hugh Bonneville

Synopsis

Andy Serkis brings to life the inspiring true love story between Robin Cavendish (Academy Award® nominee, Andrew Garfield) and his wife Diana (Golden Globe Winner, Claire Foy), an adventurous couple who refuse to give up in the face of a devastating disease. When Robin is struck down by polio at the age of 28, he is confined to a hospital bed and given only a few months to live. With the help of Diana's twin brothers (Tom Hollander) and the groundbreaking ideas of inventor Teddy Hall (Hugh Bonneville), Robin and Diana dare to escape the hospital ward to seek out a full and passionate life together — raising their young son, traveling and devoting their lives to helping other polio patients.
Written by two-time Academy Award nominated writer William Nicholson, and shot by three-time Academy Award winner Robert Richardson, Breathe is a heartwarming celebration of love and human possibility

Reviews

By Say Peng 26 Jan 2018

One can get on board with the filmmakers’ intention to make films that inspire people and respect the real people it portrays, but not at the expense of human complexity and emotional maturity.

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Breathe is a biographical drama film based on the true story of Robin Cavendish, who, in the late 20th century, became a medical phenomenon as the longest-living survivor of the contagious and deadly polio disease. Directed by famed Lord of the Rings actor Andy Serkis and produced by Cavendish’s own son, Jonathan Cavendish, Breathe suffers from its all-too-earnest intention to tell an uplifting and respectable story of Cavendish's struggle with polio and how he tried to champion reform in the care for disabled people.

Andrew Garfield plays Cavendish, who is, throughout the film, confined to either the bed or the makeshift wheelchair that his friend Teddy Hall developed, enabling disabled folks leaves the static confines of their wards. Claire Foy, who has done great work portraying Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix series The Crown, plays Cavendish’s ceaselessly devoted wife, Diana.

The first half of the film, after a quick 5-minute zip through their whirlwind courtship and marriage, depicts the couple’s struggles with coping with Cavendish's polio condition and with their marriage as a result of the disease. Midway through, the film expands its scope beyond the individual to the broader social environment of disabled people. With Hall’s new and improved invention of the mobile wheelchair, Cavendish revisits the former hospital that nursed him and tries to encourage the head doctor.

Or at least, the film tries to do all that. There are genuine heartbreaking moments, as when, in the Cavendish silently whispers his desire to die, when he suggests Diana to leave him and start her life over with someone else, and when Cavendish visits a German hospital to find that his fellow disabled are encased in uniformly stacked iron lungs that gives off the feeling of being in a morgue. But these moments are drowned out by the pandering emotional cheapness, simplistic characterisations, and hollow exuberance permeating the film, such as when a roadside accident in Spain leads into some fiesta or when the film arrives at the plot point of ‘The Speech’, and Cavendish delivers his Rousing Speech and everyone rises from their seats and clap. Really? Unlike, say, the rapturous response to the speech by Alzheimer-suffering Alice Howland, played by Julianne Moore, in Still Alice, this one feels entirely unsincere and performative.

One can get on board with the filmmakers’ intention to make films that inspire people and respect the real people it portrays, but not at the expense of human complexity and emotional maturity.
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Breathe
爱的深呼吸

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Get Showtimes

Breathe爱的深呼吸

Opening Date

Rating

Runtime

Language

Genre

Director

Cast

Synopsis

Reviews

Trailers / Videos

Everything Else

Breathe
爱的深呼吸