FAQ for
The Air I Breathe (2007) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Spoiler tags are used sparingly in order to make the page more readable. Please note that the entries at the bottom of this page are about the ending of The Air I Breathe and are not covered with tags.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Air I Breathe can be found here.

The air you breathe is basically your life and the transition of it. This movie is about people looking at their lives and wanting to change them. It is the moment of change. It is the butterfly emerging from its cocoon. It is cyclical. It is constant. It is like breathing.

The director of this film Jieho Lee once said in an interview, "You cannot love without knowing pleasure, have sorrow without knowing happiness. You need to know all of them to know one, and that balance came out." That is the basic of this film.

The first story to happen was Pleasures. Then it went into Sorrow's and then her story and Happiness' collided. What happened first was when Happiness put down the money and lost it Pleasure was at his apartment, and gave him the gun. When Happiness is robbing the bank you can clearly see that he grew more facial hair, which tells you weeks have gone by. While pleasure was at Happiness' apartment, Sorrow was at Pleasures. This shows that she has been staying with him for a few weeks as well. And we later find out that her and Pleasures baby is a few weeks old which also shows time has gone by. The last time when Sorrow is in Pleasures apartment is when she is tied up by Fingers and sees Pleasure shot by him. Then the next day is when she was at the hospital and tried to commit suicide. After Loves story line was the day Happiness robbed the bank and threw Sorrow the money the money.

Pleasure probably saw the future of Happiness and knew of his quest to obtain happiness. By giving him the gun, he was encouraging him to make the breakthrough from the perceived cycle of work. Also, before he gave the gun, it is interesting to note that he asked him repeatedly at point blanc range, why did he bet everything on the horse race.

Also, given the timeline of the movie, Pleasure likely saw (in the future) that by giving Happiness the gun, it would eventually lead to Sorrow getting the stolen money, which would allow her to escape .

He had finally obtained freedom by breaking the cycle which he described himself at the beginning of the movie: study more study and work. Additional notes: It was at this point that he suddenly realized he was finally free. It is made reference to the opening line when he questioned whether the caterpillar knows it has become beautiful upon leaving its cocoon.

These two characters were actually the opposite of the emotion they portrayed. It was about their journey to experience that emotion. It was more along the lines that you can't truly experience those emotions without experiencing its counterpart. Happiness shows his true emotion when he brakes out of his normal life cycle. Pleasure shows his shown when the character can no longer no if the preminotions he is having are completly 100% true, so he can now feel the true pleasures in life.

No one could get help because Fingers had control over the police department as well. This is insinuated when Pleasure is walking down the side walk getting money for Fingers and two officers see him, but drive off.

...before Fingers shot him?

Plesure was reaching out for pepper spray.

Yes, and it's true that it's very rare. You can find out more about it at http://www.bloodbook.com/rare-chart.html

Sorrow had no money to escape with. Her manager Frank had cleared out all of her accounts to try and pay back Fingers.

She got the blanket from the hospital itself. You can see this when she is laying down in the first scene with her being a patient at the hospital.

No, this film had the correct four emotions. However the character Fingers does pretty much represent the emotion Anger.

The musical score was done by Marcelo Zarvos.

The title of the song is "U Can Be" - by Akon & Dr. Dre

It was filmed in Mexico City.

It was a independent film so they didn't have a lot of money for promotion.The plan was for it to get what they call a "platform release." Open it in a few theaters then the following week a few more and the following week a few more. However people didn't go the first week, possibly because of the bad reviews it got, and the distributor decided to pull it out of theaters that week.

The movie itself got many mixed reviews, however all the actors got great reviews.

Some positve reviews included-

"Electric...a Brilliant ensemble piece."-Paste Magazine

"Ingenious!"-The New York Times

"Solid perfomances by Forest Whitaker, Emile Hirsch, and Sarah Michelle Gellar!"-New York Magazine

And Some Negatives were-

"14% on Rotten Tomatoes"

"D-"-Entertainment Weekly