by Tim Gordon
There has always been a fascination with movies about the making of films, and Richard Linklater leans into that allure with Nouvelle Vague, his playful yet reverent dramatization of the chaotic shoot that gave birth to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. Part comedy, part history lesson, and part love letter to cinema itself, Linklater’s latest captures the spirit of a moment when film was being reinvented often by accident.
Set in 1959 Paris, Nouvelle Vague recreates the three feverish weeks during which a brash young critic-turned-filmmaker changed the rules of the game. Guillaume Marbeck plays Jean-Luc Godard as a mixture of nervy energy, stubborn ego, and restless experimentation. He is less myth and more man here, uncertain, improvising, and driven not by grand vision so much as an instinct to blow open cinematic conventions. Around him orbit Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, the American star trying to balance her image between Hollywood expectations and Godard’s anarchic vision, and Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose easy charm and irreverence embodied the rebellion of the Nouvelle Vague.
Linklater stages Breathless not as a perfectly conceived revolution but as a messy, fragile act of creation. Godard shoots without a script, makes up dialogue on the fly, and relies on jump cuts out of both necessity and inspiration. The genius, the film suggests, lay as much in the mistakes as in the choices. Linklater delights in showing this improvisational chaos, reminding us that cinematic history is often written in the margins, not the blueprints.
The supporting ensemble provides cinephile catnip, populating the film with the movement’s key figures: François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson), Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer, and even Agnès Varda (Roxane Rivière) appear, their presence underscoring how collective this revolution was. The film positions Breathless as not just Godard’s triumph, but the flowering of a cultural moment when young filmmakers, critics, really, decided cinema could speak directly to their generation.
What makes Nouvelle Vague more than just homage is Linklater’s sensibility. Known for Boyhood, Slacker, and the Before trilogy, he has always been drawn to time, to observation, and to the texture of everyday existence. Like Godard, he has built a career on embracing imperfection, prioritizing mood and dialogue over rigid plotting. In dramatizing Breathless, Linklater is essentially holding up a mirror, acknowledging how his own career owes something to Godard’s willingness to make films that feel alive, spontaneous, and open-ended.
Still, that approach has its limits. For audiences steeped in film history, Nouvelle Vague is catnip, a time machine back to the birth of modern cinema. For others, it may feel insular, more homage than narrative, more snapshot than story. Linklater does not add much tension beyond the personalities on set, and viewers without a grounding in Breathless may wonder what all the fuss is about.
Yet the performances carry the day. Marbeck captures Godard’s prickly contradictions: arrogant yet insecure, aloof yet desperate to impress. Deutch is luminous as Seberg, playing her as both muse and prisoner, an actress straining against roles that never fully captured her depth. And Dullin’s Belmondo radiates charisma, a reminder of how much of Breathless’s enduring energy came from his nonchalant magnetism.
Ultimately, Nouvelle Vague works best as a cinematic love letter: to a film, to a movement, and to the idea that sometimes genius emerges not from control, but from chaos. Linklater doesn’t just tell Godard’s story; he reflects on his own. By revisiting the birth of the French New Wave, he reaffirms the enduring vitality of cinema that dares to break the rules and reminds us that, sometimes, art happens when you simply roll the camera and trust the moment.
Grade: B-
