Summary
Patricia sneaks through a doorway in the bathroom and out of the theater just in time to meet Michel out on the street. "Was that what you meant by double or quits?" she asks him as he lights a cigarette. "More or less," he says, and she proposes they go see a Western as the policeman runs out of the theater just as they are leaving.
We see Michel and Patricia sitting close to one another at the movie, kissing as the film plays. As they emerge from the theater, they get in a cab, and nearby, a headline being projected on a storefront reads, "Police closing in on Michel Poiccard." In another stolen car, Patricia reads an article about him and Michel says, "The police are stupid to be after me. I'm one of the few people who like them." He pulls over and Patricia points out a part of the article that says that Michel is married.
"That was long ago," he says, "She was crazy. She dumped me. Or I dumped her, I can't remember." Patricia tells Michel she really likes him as they drive and expresses indignance that someone would inform on Michel. He simply says, "Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love."
Michel realizes he needs to switch cars again, and pulls into a garage. Inside, they steal a Cadillac and Patricia drives. When he asks Patricia if she's scared, she tells him, "it's too late to be scared" and they drive out of the garage. A headline projected on the side of the building predicts that Michel's arrest is imminent; meanwhile Michel says he needs to find Antonio. A woman holding a newspaper recognizes Michel and he ducks down, telling Patricia to drive faster.
They pull over at a restaurant where Michel asks after Antonio. The bartender tells them he will tell them where Antonio is if he can kiss Patricia, and she agrees. After kissing her hand, the bartender tells them Antonio is with someone named Zumbart. They drive to a restaurant where Zumbart is and find Antonio. Antonio greets them, then excuses himself for a moment to take pictures of a man kissing a woman to use as blackmail.
Patricia goes and sits at a table nearby where her editor is sitting. Michel tells Antonio that he's in love with Patricia and Antonio hands over some money. Patricia offers to bring Michel to an apartment in Montmartre, but Antonio insists they go somewhere else that will be safer. Then, Patricia and Michel say goodbye and get back in the car, driving away.
They go and stay at an apartment where a woman is doing a photo shoot. Sitting on a couch, Michel asks Patricia why she went and said hello to her editor, to which she responds, "To make sure I didn't love him anymore." As the photo shoot ends, the woman leaves and Patricia and Michel put on a record of Mozart's clarinet concerto. When Patricia says she thought Michel didn't like music, he tells her he likes this piece because his father was a clarinetist. Patricia asks if they should go to sleep, saying that sleep is so sad because they must separate.
The next morning, Michel tells Patricia to go out and get some money and some milk. She agrees and goes out to make the purchases, but stops before she leaves to look at her lover. In town, she goes to a bar and orders a whiskey, then a coffee, before calling the inspector who visited her to let him know about Michel's whereabouts.
She leaves the bar and goes back to the apartment, where Michel is listening to the record. Coming back inside, she gives him the things she bought and he tells her they are going to go to Italy. "I can't go," she tells him, before telling him she's called the police. "I don't want to go with you," she says.
Walking away she adds, "I don't want to be in love with you, that's why I called the police. I stayed with you to see if I was in love with you or if I wasn't. And since I'm being cruel to you, it proves I'm not in love with you." The lovers engage in their own monologues, not speaking to each other but to themselves. Michel is upset and says, "You're like those women who sleep with everyone except the one man who loves them, saying it's because they sleep with everyone."
Michel runs outside where he sees Antonio driving up. Antonio hands him a briefcase with his money, and Michel tells him that Patricia gave him away and the cops are coming. Antonio encourages him to take the car and run, but Michel insists that he is tired and wants to sleep. "I shouldn't be thinking of her, but I can't help it," he says, and Antonio offers him a gun, which Michel refuses.
The cops approach and Antonio throws the gun in the street. Michel picks it up as the cops begin to shoot, then runs down the street, wounded in his back. Eventually, he collapses in the middle of the road, and Patricia runs up to him, distressed. Lying on his back, Michel makes three faces that they made to each other in her apartment, then tells Patricia, "You're a real louse." He dies, and Patricia asks the policemen what Michel said, but still doesn't understand.
Analysis
Breathless follows two young lovers who desperately want to be characters in a movie. When Patricia asks Michel to go to a Western with her after evading the policeman, the viewer is meant to see the parallel between these lovers and the characters in the Western they attend. Godard creates the cinematic playground that Michel and Patricia both long for. The boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred, and Godard stages the lovers' erotic preoccupation with eros. We see them close, their noses touching in the dark of a theater, brought together by this shared fantasy. The dark movie theater is where they are best able to express their love for one another.
Michel and Patricia's romance is all the more heightened because the presence of the police insures that it will probably not last for very long. With the authorities hot on Michel's heels, Patricia and Michel only have a short amount of time to continue their affair, which seems to act as an aphrodisiac of sorts. With not much time, they exist in a kind of bubble, driving around in a stolen car at night, a doomed duo fighting the odds nonetheless.
In this way, the film conflates romantic love with a number of other human pastimes, both criminal and not. When Patricia suggests that it is bad for someone to inform the police about a criminal's whereabouts, Michel is unsurprised and insists, "Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love." He sees all human activity as somehow linked, and in his construction, turns love into its own kind of crime, however inevitable. In linking criminality and romance so closely, Godard simultaneously simplifies and complicates the question of human connection, showing how romantic alliances are more complicated than they appear, how erotic connection is as unavoidable to a lover as a crime is to a criminal. The ethics of this implication are left ambiguous, like smoke from a cigarette.
The film fluctuates between suspenseful and romantic with an abruptness that reflects the chaos of Michel's life. Immediately after stealing another car and making a run for it, Patricia and Michel land at an apartment of a friend of Antonio's where a strange photo shoot is going on. Seemingly in the clear, they play a recording of classical music and share a romantic evening together. The narrative weaves in between suspense and romance in an almost dreamy way, as if none of it is actually happening, but is simply an imaginary figment.
In the end, Patricia betrays Michel, and it seems that the faith he put in her was blind, colored by the ardor of romantic love. As abruptly as she decides to love him, Patricia decides to betray him, anxiously taking a seat at a nearby bar and calling the authorities. Her betrayal is all the more heart-wrenching because it occurs just before he tells her he wants to leave the country with her. Just as he commits more fully to their affair, she gives him up. The game of push and pull between them, the hot-and-cold nature of their affair, ends in a particularly tragic way. The violent edge that they dance along (but never cross) in their affair is breached when Patricia makes the call and Michel is doomed to death.
