By Richard Ades
Nouvelle Vague may be the most affectionate love letter to moviemaking since Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973).
Directed by Richard Linklater, the new film reimagines the making of Breathless, the 1960 classic that established critic-turned-director Jean-Luc Godard as a star of the influential movement known as the French New Wave.
If you’re a devoted cinephile, it’s likely you’re already salivating. And make no mistake: Linklater made this film with you in mind.
Not only is it shot in the style of Breathless, with a handheld camera and black-and-white photography, but it announces the name of each historic participant—from the director and stars to the lowliest of crew members—as soon as he or she appears on the screen. Linklater assumes you’ll want to know.
But what if you’re not a cinephile? In that case, chances are you’ll be a bit less enthralled, but the flick still has much to offer thanks to a charming cast and a witty script that both reveres and pokes fun at Godard and his eccentric approach to moviemaking.
We first meet Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) as a critic who wears shades even in darkened theaters and who complains that he hasn’t fulfilled his dream of making his first movie by the age of 25. Urged on by fellow critics, and encouraged by their belief that the only authentic way to make cinema is on the cheap, he takes on a film based on a real-life criminal who’s charged with killing a cop.
Godard quickly hires the then-unknown Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) to play the protagonist, but he has more trouble casting the crook’s American girlfriend. Aiming high because he thinks it will boost the film’s box office potential, he begins a campaign to land rising star Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch).
Seberg is reluctant but eventually agrees because the film treatment was co-authored by Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), another critic-turned-director who’s already made a name for himself. Once shooting starts, however, she begins to think she made a mistake.
For one thing, Godard has no script, preferring to rely on last-minute inspiration. For another, he’s not afraid to suspend shooting if that inspiration doesn’t show up on time.
After Godard threatens the production’s bare-bones budget by repeatedly sending his cast and crew home early, not only Seberg but producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfurst) becomes worried. Beauregard repeatedly lowers the boom, but Godard refuses to change his unconventional ways.
There’s no suspense over the outcome, of course. We know going in that Breathless will become a groundbreaking success and Godard will go on to enjoy a decades-long career. The only question is just how he will accomplish this unlikely feat.
With a sense of history leavened by a sense of humor, Linklater answers that question in a way that should leave cinephiles fascinated and everyone else pleasantly entertained.
Rating: 4½ stars (out of 5)
Nouvelle Vague (rated R) can be seen at select theaters and is available on Netflix beginning Nov. 14.
Reel Time With Richard Ades 