Nouvelle Vague Movie Review (MIFF) –
Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague is energetic, cheeky, playful, and above all, deeply in love with the messy, chaotic, brilliant birth of one of cinema’s defining movements: the French New Wave. Rather than crafting a dry biopic of Jean-Luc Godard or a slavish re-enactment of the production of Breathless, Linklater gives us a vivid, lively hangout film in his trademark style—inviting us to simply be with the personalities, the tensions, the humour, and the ego clashes that made cinematic history.
As someone who capped off my mini-MIFF marathon with this screening, I couldn’t have asked for a better finale. This is a true celebration of cinema and its lovers, and it feels like the kind of project only Linklater could have made. His filmmaking has always carried the DNA of the French New Wave—unhurried pacing, conversational intimacy, playful experiments with form—and here he pays homage directly, not only stylistically but also in the sheer joy of gathering a cast of characters and letting them bounce off each other.
The set-up is deceptively simple: Linklater places us behind the scenes of Breathless (1960), Godard’s scrappy little feature that changed cinema forever. Shot in black and white on old film reels in a 4:3 aspect ratio, Nouvelle Vague doesn’t just mimic the aesthetic of the era; it feels like we’ve stepped through a time machine and found ourselves in the cafés, cramped apartments, and bustling streets of Paris as the film was coming together. It’s an immersion that never feels like pastiche—cinematographer David Chambille balances crisp period detail with Linklater’s relaxed, observational gaze.
But what makes the film tick isn’t just the reverence for the past—it’s the willingness to complicate it. Linklater has enormous admiration for Godard, but he doesn’t sanitize him. Guillaume Marbeck’s performance as Jean-Luc is both magnetic and maddening: a portrait of a man whose arrogance and intellectual posturing are pretentiously amusing one moment and deeply frustrating the next. He struts behind his ever-present sunglasses, tossing off aphorisms about art and revolution while ignoring the strain he places on those around him.
Enter Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, whose exasperation grows as Godard’s demands and aloofness wear her down. Deutch is luminous in the role, carrying both the glamour of an American star parachuted into Parisian cinema history and the grounded vulnerability of a young actress navigating a male-dominated creative whirlwind. She gives Seberg a voice—too often silenced in real history—that cuts through Godard’s self-importance with wit and weary honesty. Opposite her, Aubry Dullin charms as Jean-Paul Belmondo, capturing the effortless charisma of a man on the cusp of stardom. His easygoing nature balances the tension, turning his scenes into breezy respites from Godard’s ego trips.
Like all of Linklater’s best work, Nouvelle Vague thrives as a hangout film. It isn’t about delivering neat three-act structure or hammering home a moral; it’s about letting us spend time with these people as they wrestle with ideas, flirt, clash, and collaborate. The conversations drift between art and politics, cinema and love, often with the kind of casual brilliance that makes you want to jot down quotes on a napkin.
What’s remarkable is how effortlessly Linklater works across languages. The film is primarily in French, with Deutch delivering bilingual dialogue, and yet it never feels like Linklater is an outsider dabbling in another culture’s history. Instead, it feels like he’s at home, gently guiding his cast while allowing them to inhabit their roles fully. The collaboration between American director and French cast mirrors the very cultural exchange at the heart of Breathless—a Hollywood actress, a Parisian crew, a collision of traditions birthing something new.
Beneath the playfulness, Nouvelle Vague also carries a subtle meditation on legacy. The film constantly nudges us to consider how art is made, who gets credit, and whose voices get lost. Godard’s genius is undeniable, but so too are his flaws—and the film resists either idolizing or condemning him outright. Instead, it sits in the tension, allowing us to see the humanity behind the myth in a tribute that honours the work not necessarily the craftsman.
It’s also a gorgeously tactile experience. The costumes, the cigarettes, the typewriters, the clatter of a film set—it all feels lived-in, not staged. Linklater’s films have always been about the passage of time, and here he seems to fold time in on itself, making 1960 Paris feel as alive and contemporary as ever.
By the time the credits rolled, I found myself enlivened by Nouvelle Vague. Why? Because it left me buzzing with that rarest of cinematic emotions: the desire to rush home and watch more movies. It made me want to go and watch Breathless, and to rewatch Before Sunrise, and to keep exploring the endless ways cinema reinvents itself.
Nouvelle Vague isn’t just a film about Godard or the French New Wave—it’s a film about why we fall in love with movies in the first place. And in that sense, it might be one of Richard Linklater’s strongest efforts.
Nouvelle Vague played at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
