Breathless

Breathless is a 1983 American neo-noir romantic thriller film directed by Jim McBride, written by McBride and L. M. Kit Carson, and starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky. It is a remake of the 1960 French film of the same name directed by Jean-Luc Godard and written by Godard and François Truffaut. The original film is about an American woman and a French criminal in Paris, while the remake is vice versa in Los Angeles. Plot Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) is a cocky, hedonistic drifter, and small time car thief, in Las Vegas. He’s obsessed with Silver Surfer comic books, the rock and roll music of Jerry Lee Lewis, and Monica Poiccard (Valérie Kaprisky), a UCLA architecture undergraduate whom he knows only from a weekend fling while she visited Vegas. Leaving Las Vegas, Lujack steals a Porsche, intending to drive to Los Angeles. As he speeds down the highway and looks through the owner's possessions, Lujack discovers a handgun in the vehicle's glovebox, which he briefly toys with. He comes upon a highway construction roadblock and evades it. Seeing his reckless driving, a Patrolman gives chase and the fleeing Lujack runs off the road and becomes stuck. When the Officer spotlights him and orders him to step away from the car, Lujack impulsively grabs the gun, and blindly shoots through the back window of the car, inadvertently mortally wounding the Patrolman. The remorseful Lujack pads the dying Officers head with his coat, and flees on foot. Arriving in Los Angeles, Lujack finds his picture splashed all over the newspaper and TV news as the "cop killer." On the run, but unable to immediately leave LA while arranging to get paid for a previous car theft, under the alias of Jack Burns, Lujack breaks into Monica's apartment and waits for her to return home. Monica discovers him naked in her bed and initially declines his advances but later has sex with him in the shower. Lujack attempts to convince Monica to abscond to Mexico with him. However, Monica is a star architectural student with big plans and reluctant. Lujack shows up at her college and intrudes on her presentation of a project to her professors, initially exasperating her, but he continues to pursue her, showing up in various stolen cars to offer her rides. He eventually wears down her defenses and she succumbs to his charms once again, although still ambivalent to his insistence on accompanying him to Mexico.