One imagines that Jean-Luc Godard, the French New Wave icon and subject of Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, would probably hate Nouvelle Vague. Linklater’s entertaining, deeply respectful period film about the making of Godard’s 1960 classic Breathless would be considered too slavish by the filmmaker himself. Shot in beautiful monochrome and woefully free of the revolutionary jumpcuts that Godard helped make cool (but did not invent, as he freely admits), it’s a smartly made homage by a devoted fanboy that other fanatics will appreciate for the attention to the most minute details.
Others might just see the epitome of the pretentious French cinephile, and not want to spend too much time with Godard, played by newcomer Guillaume Marbeck with sunglasses and cigarette permanently attached to his face. Godard, a savage but intelligent Cahiers Du Cinéma film critic yearning to graduate to filmmaking, is jealous of the success Francois Truffaut had with The 400 Blows. Ironic then that it was Truffaut who conceptualized the story for Breathless, based very loosely on a real-life crime involving a cop killer on the run with his American girlfriend. Aubry Dillon plays the film’s breakout star Jean-Luc Belmondo, with Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, fresh from a trying experience with director Otto Preminger on Bonjour Tristesse. She’s reluctant to work with the fresh-faced, arrogant Godard, and her fears are justified by his lackadaisical shooting schedule to enhance creative inspiration and authenticity, and by his complete lack of a screenplay. Everyone banters, sometimes angrily, through every scene because the film is to be dubbed later anyway so who cares? Chatter away.
Nouvelle Vague is interesting in that way, to watch how the old French masters used to do it. No training wheels, no guidebook, they were flying by the seat of their pants and even if there were rules they wouldn’t follow them. There’s energy and excitement to the creative process, messy as it was, and Linklater captured that. Sometimes it led to flared tempers and the occasional brawl, but that’s the magic. Life isn’t meant to be linear; it doesn’t worry about continuity, a Godard belief that agonizes his poor, beleaguered story editor.
Linklater understands his movie isn’t going to be for everyone. Heck, your average movie fan won’t know the vast majority of the people that Nouvelle Vague introduces with static camera shots, their names displayed underneath so you can look them up later on Wikipedia. You might want to do that, but what the film doesn’t do is make you want to go back and watch Breathless. In fact, it all looks pretty terrible being put together. Personally, I find it a tad overrated and not the best example of the French New Wave. But it might make you want to go and find out more about Seberg, who Deutch plays with a sharpness, wit, and fearlessness that stands in contrast to the inscrutable Godard. Kristen Stewart played her in a fascinating biopic just a few years ago that’s worth checking out. And Dullin captures that everyman spirit and rugged charm that made Belmondo one of the most popular actors in all of France. Nouvelle Vague is an enjoyable novelty, made all the more curious that it’s a Netflix movie. Godard most certainly would not approve.
Nouvelle Vague opens in select theaters on October 31st, then Netflix on November 14th.
