Nouvelle Vague. The French New Wave -arguably the most important artistic movement in film history. In the span of just a handful of years more than a hundred young French filmmakers made their debuts, often coming from the worlds of academia, philosophy, and criticism -Cahiers du Cinema most notably- and making movies markedly different from those of the previous generation. It was a fresh and exciting period dominated by inspired eccentric personalities driven by intense creativity and a desire to experiment with the potential of their art. And yet the French New Wave does not have that reputation today -at least among most. Movies belonging to its pantheon are often hard to introduce to average moviegoers, unable to see or understand the appeal of what was being done then and what it meant. Stuffy and pretentious are the words that most commonly occur in such discussions of the Nouvelle Vague (especially if you insist on calling it “the Nouvelle Vague”). And probably none has contributed more to that perception than Jean-Luc Godard, his debut feature Breathless a watershed in influence on both those who would be moved by it to continue in its footsteps and those who would mock it for deviating from the norms of cinema.
Richard Linklater set out to remove all of that external baggage when creating his movie Nouvelle Vague, primarily about the making of Breathless, so as to convey the life and spontaneity that the movement was really all about. Honestly, it was just a bunch of visionary radicals in their twenties bluffing their way through the filmmaking process to create unique art as they saw it best. There’s just something timelessly exhilarating about that, and Linklater really captures it well. Whatever you may think of Breathless being confusing or stale by modern sensibilities, its making -at least as chronicled here- is anything but.
The film opens at the premiere of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows -often one of the candidates cited as the first New Wave film, with Truffaut and Godard, as well as Claude Chabrol and Suzanne Schiffman watching from the front row together as it closes to rapturous applause. It is recognized immediately as a turning point in French cinema, but from the perspective of these guys it might be Truffaut’s presentation to a student movie club. They all like it, but none of them take it, or themselves too seriously -apart from perhaps Godard, and he seems to lament a little that Truffaut’s debut makes him the only Cahiers editor not to have directed a feature yet, and that feeling of being left out as much as anything prompts him to set about actually doing it, using a basic story by Truffaut but not bothering to write much of a script, and casting Jean-Paul Belmondo, an actor he used in one of his shorts, as well as American Jean Seberg, baffled and uncomfortable by his unconventional process. She is not the only one.
Godard is played by Guillaume Marbeck, Belmondo by Aubry Dullin, and Seberg by Zoey Deutch -all remarkable physical matches to their parts (Dullin especially), but also more than capable of capturing their spirits. Marbeck in particular is impressive, coming to this role as a virtual unknown (he’s mostly worked as an extra up to this point), yet he manages to extol Godard’s eccentric behaviour -his unfiltered opinionated attitude, his poetic perception of human character, his sly and mischievous sense of humour -even about himself. The movie is not a Godard biopic, so we don’t get much a sense of where this personality comes from, what his psychology is like -but he does make for a fun character to be the centrepiece of this movie, everybody around him perplexed and annoyed by him, though also occasionally charmed in spite of themselves.
The great avatar for this is Seberg, frequently expressing exasperation over not having a script or the bizarre shooting days (some ending very early because Godard has ‘no more ideas’), which eventually turns into a kind of resigned ambivalence defined by copious sarcasm and a more free-wheeling attitude that Godard actually secretly prefers -and we do too. Deutch plays very well the contours of the situation, and in both French and English has a great rapport with her co-stars that more than anything speaks to that sense of charm through the arduousness. It must be understood that this isn’t a Kubrick set -the auteur obsession is not in the meticulous side of a filmmaking process and there is no abuse of the cast. Rather the opposite, Godard is more often incredibly loose with what he wants (unless he is trying to capture a specific reaction or sensation derived from the actors’ personalities themselves). Seberg and others joke he doesn’t actually know how to direct. And he probably wouldn’t disagree.
On the technical side of things, the DIY inventions again lend such a radical air to the process of making Breathless -and that is clearly what Linklater the indie king so loves about these guys and this point in time. Though they were supported by the industry, they also had to (or in some cases chose to) make their own resources to better infuse the movies with a sense of honesty. And there is a lot of fun in how bits of this are illustrated -a secret camera (and cameraman) in a tram to shoot a genuine busy street, actual citizens joining the throng of people looking at the dead body at the end of the film. It’s a really endearing kind of inventiveness that anyone who has made a student film or movie project with buddies can relate to.
The movie may be about the figures who kick-started the conversation on auteur cinema, and Linklater clearly holds such figures in high regard, but he doesn’t lionize them. He has fun with their personalities and relationships -such as in Godard being a bit of a fanboy for both Robert Bresson and Jean-Pierre Melville, who of course has an appearance in Breathless. There’s a relatable sense of ribbing between Godard and Truffaut and a playfulness in spite of everything through some of the shoot’s harsher moments. It is a sense of humour that feels natural and also distinctly Linklater in design -you could see the same kinds of repartee in something like Dazed and Confused, especially the interactions between Godard and Seberg and Godard with his beleaguered producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst). Even the more elegant Parisian environments are given a bit of a dressing down, and there’s a pretty funny sequence where Godard argues with his continuity editor over a cup in the shot that wasn’t there before -but Godard doesn’t care. On a similar note is his insistence to his editors that no scenes be cut just trimmed within -supposedly the origin of several of the film’s classic jump cuts. And though Godard adopts a little the air of inspired artistry in this, Linklater finds more in just framing him as an eccentric. And that’s the better interpretation of Godard to begin with anyway.
Virtually every character who appears in the movie is some real person who had a notable connection to the movement -Linklater slots an establishing subtitle for each introduction. All of them show up in some capacity: Varda, Demy, Resnais, Rivette, and Rohmer, elder statesmen like Cocteau (complimenting Truffaut at his premiere) and Rossellini (identified as the father of the movement), and so many more. They aren’t necessarily easter eggs though, but merely a showcase of scale. They may have all been auteurs, but the New Wave was a collective effort, which I think Linklater illustrates well even within the context of spotlighting just one highly significant movie. Nouvelle Vague is a love letter to the French New Wave without being hagiographic. It feels like more than a simple biographic film, as it re-contextualizes Godard and his collaborators in a fun and accessible way for those who might not have much interest in his art otherwise. Yes, it is something like a movie version of those teachers who use cheesy analogy to make Shakespeare relatable to teens, but it works. The Nouvelle Vague was groundbreaking, but its architects were just a bunch of weird, enthusiastic, passionate and creative people, and that is a valuable thing to be reminded of about all artists.
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