‘Breathe In’s’ fraught passion ups explosive tension

The exquisitely calibrated “Breathe In” explores a fraught mutual passion between a British exchange student (“The Invisible Woman’s” Felicity Jones) and the father of the family she’s staying with (Guy Pearce) with honesty, intimacy and complete emotional involvement. As directed by Drake Doremus, whose “Like Crazy” won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance a few years back, every moment between the characters feels so much like an explosion about to go off that viewers may hesitate to take a breath at the wrong time for fear of disturbing the film’s delicate equilibrium. This is the story not of a predatory male or a scheming Jezebel but rather of a fatal mutuality of interest, a situation heightened by the filmmaker’s gift for creating piercing reality.