It’s been clear that Richard Linklater internalized French New Wave films quasi intravenously since his debut SLACKER (1990). The spaced out characters in this episodic film who see the return of Krishna in The Smurfs and want to earn out money by selling Madonna’s pap smear don’t live in Paris, but Austin, but they were clearly heirs to François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel and Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU. Unlike any other director in the last 35 years, the nonchalance in Linklater’s films mirror the Nouvelle Vague films, the love for outsiders and improvisation and the belief in cinematic truth that shouldn’t be mistaken for naive realism. Linklater is also a cinema activist, who founded the Austin Film Society with his cinematographer Lee Daniel in 1985 which has two cinemas, a production studio and a huge archive.

Linklater’s film NOUVELLE VAGUE is a labor of love. Linklater shows how Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature À BOUT DE SOUFFLE was made with charm, humor, and repeatedly interwoven, well-known film-aesthetic bon mots: Godard: "That's not blood, that's red," Cocteau: "Film is not a profession, but a priesthood." The whole community surrounding Cahiers du cinéma makes an appearance. The Parisian film magazine that was founded in 1951 was where the later filmmakers began their career as ciritcs and drafted a new film aesthetic which broke with the “well-made,“ proper “cinema du papa“ in which primarily literary adaptations, “dramas“ in the US today, were considered high-quality cinema. The Cahiers were more interested in the “lower“ genres which weren’t valued back then, most of all film noir, Hitchcock, and expressionistic and surrealist pre-war cinema.

In NOUVELLE VAGUE, Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) is the last of the Cahiers du cinéma critics who hasn’t made a feature-length film. He steals money from the petty cash and goes to Cannes, to the premiere of François Truffauts (Adrien Rouyard) LES 400 COUPS. While there, he throws himself at producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst) who wants to produce a Godard film, but only with a Truffaut screenplay and with Claude Chabrol as the technical head. A proper, cheaper film noir is what is desired. Godard grumbles, but plays along, even though he doesn’t think much of Truffaut’s screenplay about a cop killer and his girlfriend. Truffaut doesn’t seem to mind changes in the screenplay, and Chabrol doesn’t really play a role in production, which lasts for 20 days. Jean Seberg’s husband at the time convinces here to play an arrogant debutante in the film, but she is skeptical from the beginning. Godard only does two takes max, and when he isn’t inspired, the whole day of shooting is cancelled. There’s no working for longer than two hours. There’s little dialogue, because everything is recorded in post.

Linklater mostly cast internationally unknown French TV actors that actually look like the real people. Zoe Deutsch as Jean Seberg is the most known, but she’s not an A Lister either. The fact that everyone seems permanently annoyed – the makeup artist because she has nothing to do, the star because she perceives it all as a bad joke, the costume designer because the costumes are from Woolworth – makes the stoic composure of cameraman Raul Coutard (Frank Cicurel), who allows his long body to be locked into a narrow newspaper cart without a moment's hesitation, a dry running gag.

NOUVELLE VAGUE is a delightful, charming film that was practically made to start off a double feature with A BOUT DE SOUFFLE.

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy