All you need is a girl and a gun

Jean-Luc Godard, French New Wave director extraordinaire, once said that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.
Apparently you need a strong distaste for modern cinema too. Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (in theaters now for a limited run then debuting on Netflix November 14^th) is tremendous fun, giving us a “fly on the wall” perspective on the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, the film that officially kicked off the French New Wave. 

For those not familiar with the French New Wave, it was a movement (some say a crusade) against the staleness and lack of innovation of films released during that time. Lasting from 1958 to 1969, the New Wave filmmakers were mostly composed of film critics writing for the French movie magazine “Cahiers du cinéma” (the equivalent of today’s “Empire” or “Total Film” magazines) who hated the current state of film and felt the best way to criticize the movie industry was to make movies themselves. 

Filmmakers in the French New Wave movement included Francois Truffaut, Agnés Varda, Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard.
Francois Truffaut fired the initial salvo with The 400 Blows, but Godard’s revolutionary film Breathless sealed the deal and sent shockwaves through the film industry that led to Hollywood’s Renaissance in the late 1960’s and the 1970’s. 

As the New Wave directors worked with small budgets and injected innovative editing and camera work in their films, Hollywood eventually realized that their big bloated musicals and westerns featuring hundreds of characters, predictable storylines and paint-by-numbers camera work wasn’t going to cut it any more. Without Breathless we may have never gotten Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy or Easy Rider.

Nouvelle Vague opens with a frustrated Godard wrestling with how to make his first full-length film after attending the opening of his friend Francois Truffaut’s second film.  Truffaut is years younger than Godard and has already completed two films, which puts Godard into a kind of existential crisis. Needless to say, he manages to get a Producer to put up money to back his film and we’re off to the races, watching Godard assemble his actors then film Breathless in his unique bizarre way.

Guillaume Marbeck plays Godard with icy coolness, always serious and always wearing dark sunglasses.  Seriously, are those things surgically attached to his cranium?   I can’t remember actually seeing his eyes through the whole film, but I suppose Godard liked that, always wanting to keep an air of mystery about himself.  He rarely smiles and routinely quotes philosophers, artists and authors to the point where he comes dangerously close to sounding like a pseudo-intellectual blowhard, the kind of guy at a party who says “You know, Sartre once said ‘If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company’” and you know the guy never read Sartre in his life, he just heard the quote on Jeopardy last night.

Director Richard Linklater’s love of film and filmmaking is infectious as we watch mercurial Godard make directorial decisions, backtrack, take days off, and frustrate his actors as he continually writes notes in his little black book.  What’s he writing?  It could be a diary of his experience on the set or it could be a grocery list.  Either way, he scribbles with vigor.

It’s a blast watching Godard bringing his vision to life with the help of master cinematographer Raoul Coutard (good-naturedly played by Matthieu Penchinat) who’s gleefully willing to risk life and limb to get the perfect shot, from being hilariously stuffed in a vendor’s cart to precariously standing in the back of a convertible racing down the road.

Watching the cast and crew do guerilla filmmaking on the streets of Paris is incredibly fun, especially later in the shoot.  Director Linklater shows the cast and crew’s evolution, from being irritated by Godard at first to joyfully succumbing to his madness, hungry to make a film for the ages.

Zoey Deutch plays Jean Seberg, the lead actress of Breathless.  She looks EXACTLY like Jean Seberg and when she first came on screen I gasped because Deutch not only looks like Seberg, she eerily channels her as well.   Jean Seberg, having just come off working with the tyrant director Otto Preminger on two films, wanted something different. 

She was a free and independent spirit, something not even iron-handed Preminger could tame and her playful free-wheeling spirit is on display here.   Later in life, she’d become a revolutionary akin to Jane Fonda, becoming a vocal supporter of the Black Panther Party, which led J. Edgar Hoover to run a smear campaign on her, hurting her career.  But here, she’s just a young actress looking for a fun adventure in Europe with a fledgling director.

Aubry Dullin plays Breathless lead actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, who was an amateur boxer before getting into acting.  Dullin looks remarkably like Belmondo and the chemistry between he and Deutch rivals the same sizzling chemistry of Seberg and Belmondo.
If you’ve never seen Breathless, what are you waiting for?  Watch it!    

Nouvelle Vague is so focused on Breathless and the people who worked on it (each one introduced in a cute Wes Anderson style) that it won’t mean much to those who haven’t seen Breathless. But for those of us who love Breathless and the gamut of French New Wave films, Nouvelle Vague is a treasure.  It felt like spending time with dear friends you never thought you’d see again and, above all else, it celebrates the art and wonder of movies.

‘Nouvelle Vague’ Review: All you need is a girl and a gun

See also  Mill City Ventures Raises $450M For Sui Blockchain Treasury

Nouvelle Vague Review

If you love Godard’s film Breathless, you’ll love this film. Zoey Deutch is amazing as Jean Seberg.

Zoey Deutch looks just like Jean Seberg and captures her essence perfectly.

Any film fan will love watching the chaotic filming of Breathless and Godard’s mercurial direction.

I loved the Wes Anderson-style introduction of each character in a “posed” fashion.

If you’ve never seen Godard’s film Breathless (or if you didn’t like the Breathless) you’re probably not going to like this film.