Jesse About Michel example essay topic

Jesse and Michel In Jesse's opening shot we see a close up of his silver toe caps wiggling, and the song that is playing is "I'm just a bad boy" on his way out of a casino. He doesn't come across as very slick as he is reading a "Silver Surfer comic book which he refers to several times during the film e.g. when he is discussing with the boy at the comic book stand "only a jerk would stay around when he could leave" which does refer to Jesse as he can go and escape the law but he is staying so he can try and get Monica (the girl he loves) to go with him. He is fond of Jerry Lee Lewis a rock and roll icon. He is a poser e.g. he was changing the television channels with the television zapper and he was pretending he was shooting at it. He steals fast, open topped, flashy cars like porches. He also lies to Monica about where he gets the cars from.

Where as Michel's opening statement is "After all, I'm an Arse hole". He is also reading a newspaper and looking at the cartoons and the girls in their underwear. He is wearing a trilby, a shirt, jacket and a tie he looks smart ish unlike Jesse. He has a silver chain around his wrist and he is nearly always wearing sunglasses throught the film. He seems to be able to woo the woman as he has a woman on the lookout for a car to steal. Michel also strokes his lips with his thumb repeatedly exactly the same way all the way through the film.

I think this means that he might be thinking and maybe trying to concentrate. He also likes top of the range cars and driving fast. He gets grumpy about slow drivers. "If he thinks he is going to overtake me in his bloody renault... ". .

He is very chauvinistic, he detests women drivers. At one point during the film he sees some female hitchhikers and think of picking them up and charging them one kiss per mile then sees them and decides they are ugly and drove off. Jesse is obviously a very confident person about the way he looks he thinks he is "Gods gift" he shows this in the film because he is posing into the mirror, he always has his shirt open showing off his body and he sings into the showerhead. He also just assumes that Monica will drop her career to go to Mexico with him.

He broke into Monica's apartment and put a flower and a picture of himself on her desk. He tells her he is desperate for Monica. Michel has crude language "shit! the pigs", "mind if i piss in the basin?" . He steals the key so he can break into Patricia's room, looking for money. He then pickpockets a man later on in the film for car keys. Jesse drives flamboyantly with sweeping turns and screeching tyres.

He is reckless and dramatic. Michel goes to find Patricia and with no preliminaries he invites her to Rome and tells her he loves her. Michel has a temper whenever he doesn't get his own way Patricia calls him "a kid". But he is always touching Patricia's legs and bum and telling her he wants to sleep with her.

He doesn't try to woo her to sleep with him and he never calls her pretty he says she is 'charming' and is quite nasty to her calls her a coward alot. He is also quite obsessed with the idea of other men caressing her. Michel tells her he loves her 'but not the way you think". Jesse gives Monica a tacky red flashing heart necklace which he stole form a man in the toilets and says "It's my heart, don't break it" Michel thinks he is a boxer not much of a looker. Jesse gets very jealous of Monica's male friends especially her university professor as he spies on them. There are more sex scenes in this version of the film because it's newer and isn't as frowned upon as it would have been when 'A Bout De Souffl'e' Jesse is pleased when he finds out that that Monica might be pregnant and starts thinking of names and how nice it would be for the three of them to live in Mexico.

Whereas when Michel finds out that Patricia might be pregnat e he tells her she should have been more careful and gets abit nasty with her Jesse is gets desperate for money and asks the guy at the scrap yard for some money and then when he gets told he can't give him any. Then he attempts to steal from him but gets caught by the owner and then he can't leave because the scrap yard owner has realised that the car is stolen and taken the ignition wire so he couldn't leave. Jesse is compassionate because when he shot the policeman he seemed as though it was an accident and quite worried that he had shot him. He puts his jacket underneath the wounded man's head.

Whereas Michel didn't care in the slightest he knew the gun was loaded. When Michel is laying in the middle of the road dying he says to Patricia she is a real louse. So they are both based on the sma e character but are portrayed differently, Jesse is the loveable thief whereas Michel just comes across as mean and nasty. Monica and Patricia When we first meet Monica she is at university she has the "preppy" look.

When she first sees Jesse she is cross and very resistant to going to Mexico with him, "I have to study". She had left Jesse in the middle of the night in Las Vegas. She seems scared of his intensity at the university and in the swimming pool "I want everything" "Thats not too much" When we first meet Patrica she is selling the New York Herald Tribune by walking down the middle of a busy shopping street. She is wearing the t-shirt with the name of the newspaper on it, black cropped skin tight pants, pumps, Gamine haircut she comes across as very french.

She is please when she sees Michel. She asks him if he is angry with her because she left without saying goodbye. She also says she can't go with him to Rome because she is enrolling in Sorbonne and if she doesn't her parents will stop sending her money. Monica's apartment is quite luxurious and very pink. After seeing Jesse she comes across as being very pensive in her apartment.

Monica has quite alot of sex appeal because she is elegant as benefits a french girl. Her university professor, Paul, is very fond of her, there is a photo of the both of them, he looks out for her in terms of a job and later on with police when they are asking her about where Jesse is and when she last saw him. She is unamused to find Jesse in her bed when she gets back as she says "my home not yours!" Patricia has a meeting with the newspaper editor and talks about a book he promised her about a woman who didn't want a child, and the operation was unsuccessful, and she died, and hoped it wouldn't happen to Patricia which is ironic. Patricia then goes quiet and thoughtful. She is unamused to get home and find Michel in her bed.

She wants to know what she likes about him. She wants it to be romantic like Romeo and Juliet. He seems unimpressed by this and says "just like a girl". She lives in a very small flat and the noise of the trains drowns out the conversation. Monica wants Jesse to say something nice to her like a "Romantic Limerick". She wants to know what goes on behind his face and says "i stare at you and stare at you but still i see nothing".

She wants Jesse to love her but then she doesn't want him to love her. She has to think about her future she doesn't want to run off to Mexico she likes her life as it was. Where as Jesse has no thought of the future. She asks Jesse "What will happen when she runs out of money in Mexico" She is nice enough to conver for Jesse when the police are following her near the end.

Patricia feels exactly the same way that Monica does about Jesse about Michel. She says she is independent. She also says that despite staring at Michel for hours she still doesn't know what goes on behind his face. Which is the same as what Monica was saying to Jesse. After she sleeps with Michel she asks him if he wants her to wear a bra or not I think she asks him because she know thinks that he should chose. She buys a new dress and it's a very fashoinable 50's dress.

Monica becomes intoxicated with the idea of fleeing to Mexico. She also helps Jesse decide what car to steal next as he takes her into a carpark and asks her to chose. When she wakes up the next day she isn't as enthusiastic as she was the day before and she goes to the phone bos and that is all we know we don't know if she has called the police or not. She goes back to Jesse and tells him she called the police and told him she didn't love him any more "I don't want to love you". Patrica knows hardly anything about Michel about when he killed the policeman. When she questions him about it in the car he dismissed her questions.

Even though she tells him she likes him and still Michel is stress with her. Her and Michel stay in a borrowed photography studio. She goes out in the morning to buy a paper and some milk. She makes sure she has the number the police gave her to call if she sees him. She called the police from the coffee bar and we actually see and hear her in this version of the film. She then goes back and tells Michel that he has to leave as she phoned the police and they will take him to prison.

Also she tells him that she only stayed with him to see if she loved him and she discovered that she didn't. The very last shot of her in the film is when she does the stroking of her lips exactly the same as Michel has throughout the film. Patricia takes a more active role in the following scenes, because she leads the policeman into the cinema then goes to the tol iet and the policeman goes into the mens and then Patricia escapes through a window. Police In the films they both have two policemen. In Breathless the policemen are called Lieutenant Parmental and Sergeant Enright. Lieutenant Parmental was wearing a check jacket and the other wore check trousers, a safari jacket, a striped t-shirt and white shoes.

They both have equally bad taste. The main policeman is full of threats and attitude and not likely to actually carry out any of the threats and the other is the sidekick. They are the stereotypical police team. The one that does most of the talking seems very unfriendly as he says " Yeah, he's around here somewhere I can smell him!" Whereas Sergeant Enright is seems to be the polite and gentle type, he calls Monica "ma " am" and he is very obvious when he follows her. They tell her she will loose her green card and her passport".

The police are very obvious about most things, as when they were trying to catch Jesse and Monica they used big bright spotlights. So it couldn't be a surprise so they could catch them easier. They also are slightly over the top about catching him with helicopters chasing them loud sirens and car chases. Unlike the "Breathless" police the "A Bout De Souffle" police force seem to be alot more patronising and smarter. The more dominant police man is the one in the lighter suit, wearing a trilby and slightly over weight.

The second one is in a darker suit and sunglasses. The more dominant officer is the lead in the enquiry. He pretends to be polite as it reminds him about another guy that he "ratted" on and quietly informs him he is going to do it again with Michel Piccard. We next meet the police when we see Patricia in the newspaper office when she is meeting with the editor and her friend. The dominant officer is very patronising to Patricia he calls her "little girl" and he has a slightly threatening tone "don't mess with the Paris Police" about her denying knowing Michel.

He threatens her again about her passport and gives her a number to call if she sees him. When they are following her it is almost pantomime like as they hid behind doors to hide, but they are seen by Michel on the other side of the road. The Paris police are more comical than the American Police as whilst one policeman is following Patrica, Michel is following him. When they shoot Michel he has bent down to pick up a gun which was thrown down by Ber ruti. The two films are alike in the characters they have but the two man characters are portrayed in different ways.