<\/p>\n
Any time a notable figure of the French New Wave is introduced in Richard Linklater\u2019s \u201cNouvelle Vague,\u201d<\/a> we\u2019re treated to a momentary straight-on shot of them, with a nameplate \u2014 Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, \u00c9ric Rohmer \u2014 at the bottom of the screen. It\u2019s a little like Linklater, as he goes, is cataloging different species of the same 1950s genus, or playing a grand game of New Wave \u201cGuess Who?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d is principally about Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) and the making of his landmark feature debut, \u201cBreathless.\u201d But it is also a wider portrait of a moveable filmmaking feast, of an entire generation of French filmmakers who were passionately engaged, individually and as one, in changing cinema. In 1959, it\u2019s a movement that’s on the move.<\/p>\n To a remarkable degree, Linklater\u2019s film, in French and boxed into the Academy ratio, black-and-white style of \u201cBreathless,\u201d has fully imbibed that spirit, resurrecting one of the most hallowed eras of movies to capture an iconoclast in the making. The result is something endlessly stylish and almost absurdly uncanny, even if \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d never adopts the brash daring of its subject.<\/p>\n Instead, \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d is more of a straightforward though deeply affectionate ode to a singularly unconventional filmmaker. The contrast makes \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d a curious thing: a meticulous recreation of a rule-breaking cinematic revolution. Godard would have hated it. That doesn\u2019t make it any less enchanting.<\/p>\n At the outset of the film, Godard and company have gathered for the premiere of Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s \u201cThe 400 Blows.\u201d For Godard, the last of the Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma crowd to transition from writing criticism to directing, anxiety is mounting. He\u2019s 29 and beginning to fear he\u2019s missed the wave.<\/p>\n But confidence is not lacking in Godard. (Marbeck, excellent, doesn\u2019t take off his sunglasses for the duration of the movie, including in movie screenings.) On the heels of the Cannes reception for \u201cThe 400 Blows,\u201d the producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyf\u00fcrst, tremendous) agrees to make \u201cBreathless.\u201d Beauregard warily eyes Godard, likely aware of the trouble he\u2019s making for himself. He pleads for Godard to just make a sexy \u201cslice of film noir.\u201d<\/p>\n Godard, though, knows his chance has finally come to transfer all his ideas into film. Before production starts, he visits the elder statesmen of European cinema at the time \u2014 Jean-Pierre Melville (Tom Novembre), Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe) \u2014 for advice. \u201cShoot quickly,\u201d Rossellini tells him.<\/p>\n Godard wants no lights, no soundstages and no script. He\u2019ll go into each day not knowing what he\u2019s going to shoot. On the first day of production, he announces: \u201cTime to enter the pantheon.\u201d<\/p>\n The bulk of \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d is the day-to-day shooting of \u201cBreathless,\u201d for which Godard cast Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) as the small-time gangster lead and Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) as the Herald Tribune-selling American student he wants to run off with. (These, like so many of the many roles of \u201cNouvelle Vague,\u201d are so well matched that casting director Catherine Schwartz deserves a shot at the inaugural Oscar.)<\/a><\/p>\n The thrill of following the making of \u201cBreathless\u201d day by day is seeing just how brazenly Godard disregards the assumed conventions of moviemaking. On the first day, he wraps after two hours. For Linklater (\u201cSlacker,\u201d \u201cDazed and Confused,\u201d \u201cBefore Sunset\u201d), these scenes have a special resonance. Few filmmakers believe more ardently in the benefits of a leisurely hangout.<\/p>\n But Godard\u2019s methods have a purpose. \u201cI\u2019m trying to seize reality at random,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n \u201cNouvelle Vague\u201d captures Godard stealing from his influences (Ingmar Bergman, Duke Ellington, Humphrey Bogart) while striving to realize his own voice as an artist. \u201cBreathless\u201d is a movie poised between movie eras \u2014 a deconstructionist bebop riff on a Hollywood genre film. \u201cNouvelle Vague,\u201d more than anything, is about how becoming an artist requires both reverence for the past and a stubborn insistence on breaking ground on the future.<\/p>\n