The year is 1960. Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) is a writer for the iconic film journal Cahiers du Cinema. He’s very jealous that his colleague Francois Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) made the highly acclaimed 400 Blows (1959), while Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson) directed three feature films. Godard had authored one short film, yet he dismisses such movies as “anti-cinema”. So he sets out to make his first feature Breathless (1960). Producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst) steps in in order to finance the film, blithely unaware of the wild ride ahead.
Ths rest of this 105-minute film consists almost entirely of the 20 shooting days, when Godard broke pretty much every cinema rule in the book, to the desperation of his lead actors Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) and American actress Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch), and just about every member of the crew. He disregarded continuity, audio syncing, multiple takes (always opting for the first only attempt at getting a scene right), in an approach intended to yield spontaneity, and to create a brand new film language. Jean Rouch and Melies Brothers had previously flirted with jump cuts, but nobody had ever used them for narrative purposes. Faux raccords (intentionally desynchronised audio and video) was something unheard of. Otherwise, the story of Breathless was rather conventional: the criminal misadventures of a petty thief and his deceitful girlfriend, filmed on location in Paris.
Famous directors such as Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean Cocteau, Agnes Varda, Robert Bresson and the Italian “father” of the Nouvelle Vague Roberto Rossellini all make a brief appearance in the film, played by various less-known actors. In addition, this intertextual movie is deliciously intoxicated with quotes from various people, such as Paul Gaugin’s “art is either plagiarism or revolution”, or the widely known “a film is made five times: conception, script, production, editing and screening” (whose authorship is briefly mentioned, but I fail to remember). Nouvelle Vague sits firmly in the third stage. There is nothing on conception and script-writing, and just a one scene in the cutting room (at the end of the film).
A good 30 or 40 historical film professionals – including some relatively obscure production crew – are introduced in a medium shot and facing the camera, as if someone was about to take their photograph. They are played by actors, with the intended identity of the character revealed in a caption. A strange artistic choice that seems to serve no clear purpose.
Sirty-four-year-old American directorRichard Linklater, aided by French cinematographer David Chambille, sets out to make a movie that not only takes place in 1960 but also looks like it was made in that year. And he does succeed. The black-and-white photogtaphy and the mise-en-scene transport viewers in time to a Paris and also to a Cannes of yore (incidentally, the very same place where its world premiere just took place).
Nouvelle Vague breaks one golden rule of French Cinema. The film is directed by American director Richard Linklater, yet written by four pair of other hands: Holly Gent, Vincent Palmo Jr, Michele Petin and Laetitia Masso. As a rule of thumb, France’s biggest funding body the CNC only finances films written and directed by the same person, thereby vouching for the auteur concept (it is no coincidence that even the word itself in French). This feels like wrong type of subversion: you’d expect the director of a Nouvelle Vague tribute to subvert the rules of filmmaking, not the rules of auteurship. This is a decision guaranteed to ruffle some feathers in France, a country that often finds pleasure in having its feathers ruffled. That’s perhaps the precise reason why they allowed this exceptionalism. Nouvelle Vague is an entirely French made and financed film (including money from the CNC).
This begs the question: is Linklater a real auteur or a real-life Christian de Neuvillette (in relation to the character of French play Cyrano de Bergerac: Christian boasts good looks, but it’s Cyrano who writes his love letters)?
The decision to cast Zionist actress Zoey Deutch to play Jean Seberg, an outspoken activist who supported the Black Panthers and Palestine, has been accurately described as “disgraceful” and “tone deaf”.
All in all, Richard Linklater’s new creation feels extremely regimented. In others word: a well-behaved piece of filmmaking. That’s anathema to the spirit of Jean-Luc Godard. Nevertheless, Nouvelle Vague is concise, entertaining and enlightening. This is a significant improvement on the director’s previous film Blue Moon (which premiered just three months ago in Berlin), also portraying a specific moment of the career of a well-known artist (lyricist Lorenz Hart). It’s targeted at a large audience, and intended to enjoyed by fans of the Nouvelle Vague and those who never heard of it alike.
Nouvelle Vague (aka New Wave) premiered in the Official Competition of the 78th Festival de Cannes, when this piece was originally written. It is probably the most eagerly anticipated film of the event. Also showing at the Sarajevo Film Festival, in San Sebastian, at REC Tarragona, and at the BFI London Film Festival.
