150 Word Review: 'Nouvelle Vague' (2025)
Waiting for Godard
I didn’t know I wanted director Richard Linklater to remake his 1994 stoner hangout comedy classic Dazed and Confused as a black-and-white, French-language homage to New Wave cinema and its coterie of bohemian filmmakers, like François Truffaut.
He channeled Wes Anderson, sans preciousness, when making Nouvelle Vague, a loose, droll, behind-the-scenes billet-doux to Jean-Luc Godard’s experimental, hugely influential Parisian crime drama Breathless. I imagine some cinephiles may reject Linklater’s refusal to take Godard seriously, but I think Godard would have appreciated the lack of respect.
This is a romp with excellent costumes and a few fun performances, especially Guillaume Marbeck as the I-wear-my-sunglasses-at-night Godard, a lanky, confident nerd. Zoey Deutch’s performance as American Jean Seberg is pleasant but not particularly nuanced; that’s how she’s written. Nouvelle Vague doesn’t plumb emotional depths, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to get people in 2025 to watch an existential 1962 movie.
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Correct, and BREATHLESS is, in fact, the next film on my Criterion list. Thanks, Rick!
Loved the casting of this (being able to guess who the characters were without the Wes Anderson help), but could not get into the movie at all as a screen story. But I will rewatch Breathless as a result, so if that was the goal mission accomplished.