With Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater turns his lens on one of cinema’s most electrifying moments: the birth of the French New Wave, inviting us to observe how a revolution in filmmaking quietly came to life. Shot in French, in black-and-white, and in a boxy 4:3 frame, the film brings back the heady Paris days of 1959, when Jean-Luc Godard and his Cahiers du Cinéma peers set out to reinvent cinema itself—and, against all odds, actually succeeded.
Come experience Nouvelle Vague in theaters, beginning Friday, October 31st at the Laemmle Royal, Claremont, Glendale, and NoHo 7.
Rather than dramatizing the legendary finished product À bout de souffle [Breathless], Linklater focuses on the process of its creation. We watch Godard pitch his radical proposal to a skeptical producer, assemble a cast of willing conspirators, and wrestle with the chaos of what develops when limited means meets infinite ambition. The film unfolds in cafés, cramped apartments, and dim cutting rooms, where ideas collide faster than film stock can capture them.
Linklater’s directorial approach is both affectionate and incisive. He recreates the textures of the period with meticulous care—grainy cinematography, reel-change marks, and jittery hand-held movement—but his real interest lies in unpacking the spirit of risk that defined the New Wave. Yet Nouvelle Vague doesn’t attempt to imitate Godard’s jump-cuts or anarchic cool; instead, it channels something closer to Truffaut’s warmth and curiosity; that tender belief in cinema as both laboratory and love affair.
Among the cast, Guillaume Marbeck’s Godard and Zoey Deutch’s Jean Seberg both ground and fortify the film’s emotional backbone. Marbeck faithfully captures Godard in all his restlessness and self-doubt, while Deutch lends Seberg an air of grace and melancholy, embodying the paradox of a star who feels both essential and expendable in someone else’s vision. Their uneasy rapport becomes the heart of the film, as a portrait of two artists suspended between devotion and doubt.
While Nouvelle Vague may lack the raw insurgency of its inspiration, it triumphs as a thoughtful and exuberant reflection on the act of creation itself. Beneath its wry humor and intelligence runs a current of affection for those who dare to see life as cinema, and cinema as life. In the end, it is a film that reminds us of why movies matter: not because they preserve the past, but because they keep it perpetually alive.
“It’s a savory pleasure to be able to step into this time machine and luxuriate in the company of people who thought that movies were the only thing that mattered.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“A cinephile’s film through and through.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
“A slick Steadicam ride through a historic, tumultuous moment.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian