by Cris Mora-Villa, Contributing Writer
Despite my adoration for Richard Linklater, he is a filmmaker I’ve simultaneously come to recognize as a contemporaneous white whale, as I’ve yet to see the full breadth of his movies. Prior to 2025, I had only seen about a handful of his works. Among them are some of Linklater’s most well known films such as Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, and Everybody Wants Some!!. This slow progression through his filmography is more a testament to my own molasses-like pace than anything else, but I nonetheless find myself excited for a new Linklater project.
Nouvelle Vague’s source is Jean-Luc Goddard’s Breathless, one of the preeminent works which has come to define the eponymous French New Wave movement of the 1960s. Nouvelle Vague translates directly to “New Wave” in French, a simple yet understated choice that surmises the core of Linklater’s film to a T. The film follows Goddard and his cast and crew during the production of Breathless. In a perfect double feature, I was able to catch a retrospective screening of Breathless prior to Nouvelle Vague. Credit to the Chicago International Film Festival for curating said double billing, as I was long overdue for a revisiting of Breathless. My initial thoughts on the film were mixed. Though I understood why it had garnered such an illustrious reputation, that didn’t equate to me necessarily liking it. This was not my experience on a second go around. As was the case with Nouvelle Vague, I found Breathless to be a delight.
While this isn’t unique to Breathless, the movie breathes a history that Linklater and company recreate to a pristine degree. Of all the various vantage points for which to approach Nouvelle Vague, I’m especially drawn to the basics of the craft in how late 1950s Paris is represented. The return on investment in choosing to shoot in black and white is worth the price of admission alone. I know this is a Netflix release, but that’s beside the point. David Chambille’s cinematography does not use black and white to overcompensate via aesthetic set dressing. Nouvelle Vague busts its ass to visually convince the viewer that we really are spending time with Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin). Though we’re confined to only draw visual comparisons between the onscreen actors in Breathless and their Nouvelle Vague counterparts portrayed by contemporary actors, all the industry portrayals of filmmakers within the French New Wave scene bare a cheeky authenticity that balances itself rather neatly. It would be one thing for Agnès Varda (Roxane Rivière) or François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) to pop in for a scene, and for that to induce an eye roll, but that never was my reaction despite the litany of other examples. This brings me to Godard himself.
In classic Linklater fashion, this film is a hangout movie. With hindsight, this was the ideal choice for how I would best be able to find my way into this material, as it really just wants to have a good time. Goddard himself is represented to meet and in some ways set the tone, and that makes his depiction a comedic goldmine. The viewer is cued in early to how self-aware the movie is whenever it makes reference to the highbrow nature of the French New Wave. Everything Goddard says and does is treated with the minimal amount of self-importance once he’s actually behind the camera. Within the framework of Nouvelle Vague’snarrative, Goddard is not exempt from holding himself to a high standard when comparing his work to that of his peers. In practice, almost every scene we see recreated from Breathless is there to either show some actual ingenuity or take the piss. Nouvelle Vague goes to show that the act of making a movie can at times be a silly endeavor, but that doesn’t take away from its immense power or endless possibilities. I sense Goddard and Linklater understand this.
It should be no surprise that Linklater himself bore great inspiration from Goddard when starting out as a filmmaker. I harken back to when I first saw Slacker, and recognized it as a rosetta stone of sorts. Basically devoid of any plot, and operating with the barest of resources, it is a movie that set the foundation for Linklater’s career as a free-spirited revolutionary. When it comes to the rise of American independent cinema in the ‘90s, Linklater is as vital a part of that collective as anyone. He expresses a version of this sentiment towards Goddard through the camera, be it in his own laissez-faire kind of way. Goddard is neither written nor depicted as some sort of deity, but just a guy with lots of ideas who has to ramshackle his first feature film in 20 days. We see what his unorthodox process looks like throughout this period. Though it is relatively mundane, we don’t doubt Goddard’s intentions when he chooses to go left when everyone around him says to go right. To do the unexpected and find some truth in the unexpected. In the end, Breathless is completed and what we get is the film we know today. It was the start of what would become a legendary career in the annals of film history.
I have a lot of love for what Linklater has done in looking at Goddard as an auteur. Legacy as a concept is something I love contending with, depending on how it is broached. Nouvelle Vague is decidedly tinged with a bit of romanticism, but still feel like an honest work befitting Linklater’s easygoing style. Though he is notably not credited for the film’s screenplay, his influence is sure to pronounce itself through the actual filmmaking. Always cool, consistently dynamic, never laborious, and rife with an authorial flair. Wouldn’t expect much less from a modern master who, by evidence, has a lot more films left in him.
Rating: High Side of Liked It
Nouvelle Vague is currently playing in theaters
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