Director: Richard Linklater
Writer: Holly Gent, Laetitia Masson, Vincent Palmo, Jr.
Stars: Guillame Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin
Synopsis: Follows the production of Jean-Luc Godards’s “Breathless”.
As every cinephile must know, the French New Wave is one of cinema’s most important film movements. Influenced by Italian Neorealism and the works of Alfred Hitchcock, French film critics from the Cahiers du Cinema magazine (François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and the godfather of the movement, Jean-Luc Godard) and the Left Bank directors (Agnes Varda, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais) assembled in proposition for a new vision for filmmaking and the cinema being shown in their country at the time, which they criticized as trite and unimaginative (the “tradition de qualité”, as they referred it to). Some aspects present in films that emerged from this movement are talk of modern situations, directors having complete control of their movies, and a focus on showcasing realistic portraits rather than pure fiction.
After the release of Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, and Godard’s Breathless (À bout de souffle), just to name a few, cinema changed forever. A breath of fresh air roamed through the medium and reached international markets–inspiring many for years to come. Even to this day, the works made from the French New Wave have influenced people to become filmmakers or view cinema differently–timeless pieces that conjure the magic of art and prove to be more than artistic, but revolutionary ones. To honor such a movement and those involved in it, which many have done multiple times with books, documentaries, and art installations, American filmmaker Richard Linklater gives them an homage with his latest feature, Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave, screening in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival).
Nouvelle Vague is an act of love from Linklater, who has been inspired by Truffaut, Rivette, and Godard not in style or technique but in the free-spiritedness of their work. Unfortunately, it is an act of love that they would have hated, and very much so, as it goes against what they were implementing back in the late 1950s. Yet Linklater does not care about such; he aims to showcase his love and admiration for a time and place, and the people in it, which is long gone, but its effect is still felt, like cinematic aftershocks after their shattering artistic earthquake.
In the same style and spirit, although with some elements being stripped down for a more relaxed fit rather than being a straight rip-off, Nouvelle Vague is a film about the making of the iconic Breathless from 1960 following Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch, who is excellent in the film and very spot-on with her accent work and posture), François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) as they make a film that will change cinema forever and cement Godard as an icon of the art form. Every movement Linklater creates in the production is made to reenact or allude to past creations of those who inspired him, and he wants to celebrate with this piece.
You see this in the shooting style—cinematographer David Chambrille was tasked with matching the essence of Raoul Coutard (the cinematographer of Breathless)—the sound mixing, and even in the casting choices, with each actor looking very similar to the people they are interpreting. From beginning to end, you sense how Linklater wanted to take the audience and his cast and crew back to 1950s France, creating an immersive experience. With such celebration, there is an abuse of nostalgia, an issue that occurs in some of his features, particularly his period pieces, Everybody Wants Some and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, where although he nails the specifics of the time and place, there’s a rumination that is all remembrance without discussion.
That issue then travels to Linklater’s 1950s France set in Nouvelle Vague, where the memory of the ghost of the legends is there, but there are no assertions on why this time, place, people, and films were so important and influential. He treats the setting and topic with his hangout film panache. We get the behind-the-scenes look of the production–Godard’s on-the-spot direction, his relationship with Beauregard, meetings, the mechanics of their techniques, line readings–as well as reenacted scenes, which do feel quite tacky and the film could have been done without them. Nevertheless, Linklater does something that provides his film with plenty of magic, one that fractures time and memory in a playful way that I vastly appreciated.
Some “fictionalized” scenes shift the film from its hang-out, history lesson persona to an encapsulation of the movement and all of its participants. In one of those scenes, we see Jean-Luc Godard having a fascinating conversation with Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe), a prominent figure in Italian neorealist cinema, with films like Germany, Year Zero and Paisan. Godard viewed Rossellini as a foundational figure in modern cinema. Hence, a conversation between a student and his hero helped build the figure of Godard within the confines of the movie’s purpose, showing the “passing of the baton” in revolutionary filmmaking. I do not know if this conversation ever happened, and I haven’t found a source of information confirming it.
Linklater has people who knew Godard in his production team, so it may be true. But this brings a mysticism to Nouvelle Vague that is captivating and outright magical, a feeling missing for most of the picture. Another short sequence with the same effect is when we see Robert Bresson shooting his 1959 film Pickpocket in an abandoned Parisian tunnel. This is yet another filmmaker (and film) that inspired many filmmakers, from Paul Schrader and Abel Ferrara to Chantal Akerman and Andrei Tarkovsky. Linklater himself has not been inspired by Bresson per se, but that is beyond the point of including him. If you are encapsulating this period, he must be included as one of the best figures to emerge from it.
Yet again, it is a minor scene that fades rapidly when put into the microcosm of Nouvelle Vague, like many of the cameos that appear here and there (Agnes Varda, Claude Chabrol, Jean Cocteau), yet it helps Linklater navigate this artistic world of filmmakers, poets, storytellers, and activists. The screenplay struggles with placing all these people on the canvas; most appear for seconds and disappear. And their backstories and influence are not referred to. That is up for the audience to pick up on if you know your cinema history, or be lost upon if you haven’t. At the time, neither Godard, Truffaut, nor producer Georges de Beauregard knew what they had their hands on, yet believed in it through and through. Now, it has reached the point where many see it as one of the best films in cinema history.
For someone who does not know what the French New Wave and the founders entail, Nouvelle Vague will be just another movie about making movies. The film has conversations and dialogue that allude to the inspirational nature, yet it is too far between. This is the opposite of what happens with David Fincher’s Mank, where the impact of Mankiewicz’s screenplay is seen through a microscope–how every conversation, action, open bottle, cigarette burned, and discussion leads to the creation of Citizen Kane. In contrast, Linklaker’s piece lets these historical moments float in and out like half-remembered dreams, more concerned with evoking a time than interrogating it. Reverence is through and through in the director’s gaze, but it comes with a cost, and that is depth.
A romanticization of this movement’s chaos, brilliance, and rebellion builds as the characters interact with one another, albeit without the contradictions or the radicality. It feels safe, way too neat and clean, without the grittiness of French New Wave. And while there are things to like and appreciate, Nouvelle Vague ultimately ends as trite. At least, it is a better and more honest homage than a previous Cannes Film Festival film, Godard Mon Amour (Le Redoutable) by Michel Hazanavicius, which was an embarrassing attempt at uncovering the next stage of Godard during the production of La Chinoise. That was pastiche. Linklater does not amount to doing such things because he respects Godard and company plenty.
