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′
Reviewed by Meredith Taylor
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 Cannes Film Festival where it premiered in competition but went empty-handed.
Amid all the torment and angst of the features in last year’s main competition this gentle and elegantly crafted black and white affair reminds us of how it all started for the band of Nouvelle Vague 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 that feels entirely appropriate for the era. 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.
One scene takes place in the offices of Cahiers du Cinema (that launched the New Wave) in Paris where the writers, (and 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 that year’s 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
IN UK CINEMAS FROM 25 January 2026