Nouvelle Vague

2025's NOUVELLE VAGUE is as loving a cinematic valentine as I've seen.   The French New Wave came out of the late 1950s with bold notions of how a film should look and play.  Revolutionary styles eschewing traditional narratives and editing.  Inferring rather than always showing.  Embracing the existential.  One of the first films in this movement was 1959's BREATHLESS, directed by a film critic named Jean-Luc Godard.  Director Richard Linklater recreates the difficult shoot.  It is fascinating.  He also recreates mid twentieth century Paris in stunning fashion.  Shot on location.   

His film even looks and feels like something from its era.  Cinematographer David Chambille used a Sony Venice 2 digital camera with vintage lenses.  Kodak film stocks were employed, as were simulated grain, "cigarette burns" and scratches in post production.  Done right.  Far better than in an earlier Netflix offering, MANK.

Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) is portrayed as cocksure, arrogant, disrespectful. Likely close to the truth. Entirely confident of his vision.  Much to the frustration of his producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfurst) and the cast and crew.  Most notably is American in Paris Jean Seberg (Zooey Deutsch) who threatens to quit amongst constant rewrites and truncated (sometimes aborted) shooting days.  She may have been disgusted with Otto Preminger on BONJOUR TRISTESSE, but at least he followed continuity.  Godard's leading man Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) and D.P. Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) are more forgiving, eager to see what emerges from such a free form production. 

No one knew what a groundbreaker BREATHLESS would turn out to be.

Linklater seems positively gleeful with NOUVELLE VAGUE.  Warts and all, but absolutely wide eyed and reverent.  I was expecting sometimes tedious and pretentious.  Here is a project that could've gone very, very wrong.  Film buffs should be in heaven, but anyone interested in the time and place should be enthralled.   Ah, Paris!