Breathe

Fall break continues and I spent yesterday sleeping in scandalously late and then reading all afternoon.  In the evening I went to a Thursday preview of Breathe which I had been looking forward to for quite a while.  I am a sucker for British period pieces and the trailer for this inspirational true story looked gorgeous.  However, it left me feeling a bit flat.  Andrew Garfield plays Robin Cavendish and Claire Foy plays his wife Diana.  They meet, fall in love, get married, move to Kenya, and become pregnant with their first child in rapid succession.  Then Robin is stricken with polio and is paralyzed from the neck down.  He begs everyone to just let him die but Diana demands that he fight to live.  With her help Robin is able to leave the hospital, become mobile with the help of a wheelchair that breathes for him, and travel the world advocating for the rights of the severely disabled.  Garfield and Foy give wonderful performances and the cinematography is breathtaking but there is something lacking in the story itself.  We never really get to know the characters beyond a superficial level.  Diana's devotion to Robin doesn't feel authentic because their love story is never fully explored.  Robin sees her at a cricket match, in the next scene they are going on a date, in the next Diana tells her brothers (both played hilariously by Tom Hollander) that she is getting married, and then they are in Kenya.  It is literally that quick, almost as if the filmmakers are merely ticking boxes.  The whole film moves from one episode to the next without much explanation.  Also, the difficulties that the Cavendishes must have surely faced are glossed over so that their life looks like one big garden party after another on their sprawling estate.  They laugh when the dog unplugs Robin's respirator and throw a party when they are stranded on the road in Spain.  It ends up feeling very bland and I was hoping for so much more.