PLOT: A young Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) attempts to make his feature directorial debut with a pulpy crime drama he intends to innovate by breaking every cinema rule he can.
REVIEW: Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague is clearly a passion project for the veteran director, and it’s easy to see why. Godard was one of filmdom’s biggest outlaws, shaking up the craft of moviemaking so profoundly that his work actually changed what had previously been a pretty narrow definition of film. In his own way, Linklater did the same with Slacker, so it’s not hard to view them as kindred spirits. As a result, Nouvelle Vague (French for “New Wave,” as in the French New Wave) is an affectionate, warm, funny film that isn’t afraid to poke fun at its protagonist’s habits.
The movie has a terrific introduction to Godard, showing him and his fellow auteurs (including Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut) at a film premiere, puffing cigarettes, while he adds to his arrogance by wearing sunglasses he never removes throughout the film (a trademark of the real-life Godard). A critic for Les Cahiers du Cinéma, he’s frustrated that his collaborators, Truffaut and Chabrol, have become celebrated while he has yet to make a film. The story charts him making Breathless, which, of course, has become perhaps the art film to end all art films.
Now, if you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs of French cinema in the fifties and sixties, don’t expect too much handholding. Each character is introduced in a very Godardian way, posing for the camera as their names appear beneath them. If you don’t know who Jean-Pierre Melville is, or why Robert Bresson is hanging around with a pickpocket, the movie won’t spell it out. That obviously limits its audience, but I could also see Nouvelle Vague being essential for a film studies class or for anyone trying to get a handle on Godard’s work—which I personally find nearly impossible to watch (with the exception of Breathless).
Godard is an arrogant hero, prone to rattling off quotes by Sartre and da Vinci as he explains his grand vision for cinema. Yet, knowing how Breathless turned out, you can’t help but root for him. The film does a terrific job of evoking this period of French film creativity, which truly was one of a kind.
Linklater has assembled a great French cast, led by Guillaume Marbeck, who perfectly captures the iconoclastic auteur. Zoey Deutch is the only Hollywood star in the cast, fittingly playing Jean Seberg—the lone American star of Breathless—who bristled at her director’s free-form style after suffering under the tyrannical Otto Preminger. Aubry Dullin is an uncanny Jean-Paul Belmondo, who went on to become one of the biggest international stars of the era (influencing none other than Jackie Chan when he began doing his own stunts later in his career).
While Nouvelle Vague may not mean much to people who aren’t serious aficionados of the French New Wave, it’s still an entertaining, fresh take on the making of a film that broke so many rules. There’s something gloriously perverse about the fact that a movie about Godard—a champion of cinema—is premiering on Netflix. Then again, he loved irony, so maybe it’s perfect.
