Dir: Richard Linklater | Cast: Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin, Zoey Deutch, Adrien Rouyard, Antoine Besson, Jodie Ruth Forest, Bruno Dreyfurst, Benjamin Clery, Matthieu Penchinat | France. 2025. 105′
This nostalgic homage to the sixties transports us back to those heady days of the ‘New Wave’ like a breath of fresh air blowing through the Croisette at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Amid all the torment and angst of this year’s contemporary features there is this gentle and elegantly crafted black and white affair that reminds us of how it all started for this band of indie filmmakers.
Working almost entirely in French, Richard Linklater opts for a grainy look and Academy Ratio directing a script by Holly Gent and Vince Palmo that imagines a chronicle account of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, a 20-day shoot. Nouvelle Vague recalls in pristine detail the stylish simplicity of the era when directing, producing and editing on a shoestring was still fun and exciting, although fraught with Godard’s habit of writing on the hoof and tearing up the rule book.
The casting is a dream. Linklater has found a bunch of actors that not only look like Melville, Belmondo, Truffaut, Seberg and Godard, but seem to sound like them too, and they are introduced individually with onscreen name titles to avoid any confusion.
Together they capture the zeitgeist and insouciance of a time when everything seemed possible. Not a lover of the original director, I actually started to warm to Guillaume Marbeck’s Godard, the way he moves exudes a charm that softens the putative arrogance of the real man, transforming it into a frankness feels entirely appropriate for his role. Deutch’s Seberg is delicate yet self-possessed and totally lacking coquettishness, Duillon’s Belmondo is warm and playful. There are also roles for Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette.
Once scene takes place in the Cahiers du Cinema (that launched the New Wave) in Paris where the writers, budding filmmakers, are clacking away at typewriters while sharing antidotes. Godard, the last of the pack to direct, filches a few thousand francs from the team’s petty cash box to attend the Cannes Film Festival. We are then wafted down to the riviera to attend the event as it was back then, cameras flashing and stars mingling on the red carpet and on the Plage Zamenhof in front of the Martinez.
The lofty DoP Raoul Coutard (Penchinat) shoots on Godard’s command and David Chambille’s camerawork captures the febrile atmosphere and minute street details: chic women in heels and headscarves, Citroens cabriolets and old Peugeots drift by to the strains of a jazzy soundtrack of French and American classics. This is a trip down memory lane definitely worth taking. @MeredithTaylor
CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2025