Moreover, he\u2019s spent a lot of time thinking about the people who made them. The film critics and essayists of Cahiers du Cin\u00e9ma <\/em>have become cinematic legends, writers whose love of film was so all-encompassing that most of them became filmmakers themselves, and shook up the entire art form in the process. The masterstroke of their portrayal here is the notion of the Cahiers<\/em> crew as the sneering cool kids, smoking and talking shit in the corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A visiting Roberto Rossellini praises them as a \u201ccircle of cinemaniacs, insurgents all,\u201d which is accurate. But the best thing about that scene is the button, in which we see the world-famous master of cinema grabbing a handful of the free sandwiches on his way out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019re fiercely opinionated and impossible to please, yet supportive of each other \u2014 in their way. The most opinionated is Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), about whom we\u2019re told early on, \u201cHe\u2019s the real genius. At least that\u2019s what he\u2019ll tell you.\u201d He\u2019s immediately framed as a know-it-all, both self-satisfied and unsatisfied, and the only thing that will either make him happy or shut him up is to finally let him direct his own feature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These early patches are far and away the roughest of Nouvelle Vague<\/em>, in which Linklater\u2019s four screenwriters struggle heroically to impart a lot of information and a lot of introductions. The latter are handled fairly elegantly (with simple straight-to-camera close-ups, superimposed with character names), but the extent to which the set-up scenes turn into a collection of Godard\u2019s Famous Quotes \u2014 \u201cArt is not a pastime but a priesthood,\u201d \u201cAll you need for a movie is a girl and a gun,\u201d \u201cThe best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie,\u201d all the hits \u2014 feels both phony and lazy. And it\u2019s a cute moment, but the scene where Rossellini and Godard end each line of a conversation by saying each other\u2019s name is extremely<\/em> \u201cDon\u2019t you agree, Paul McCartney of the Beatles?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But once we begin the actual physical production of Breathless<\/em> (day by day, for the 20 days of principal photography), it\u2019s easy to get caught up in it all. Linklater, no doubt through a combination of research and personal experience, summons up the genuine electricity of the first-time filmmaker, and the excitement is infectious. And he zeroes in on what was legitimately, non-hyperbolically groundbreaking about Godard and his film: the on-the-fly photography, the disregard for continuity, the striving for spontaneity, and the freedom of the jump-cut editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Godard was undoubtedly a genius. And as with many geniuses, he was also a huge pain in the ass. And here, Nouvelle Vague <\/em>also fumbles a bit; we get what made him so unique, and we see what made him so infuriating. But the character within this particular dramatic narrative \u2014 and therefore the try-as-he-might performance by Guillaume Marbeck \u2014 never quite penetrates the surface. We get a sense of what he was, but not who<\/em> he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zoey Deutch, however, makes for a captivating Jean Seberg; she has that ethereal, pixieish, movie-star quality down cold, and her considerable spark helps keeps things lively. It\u2019s hard to decide what\u2019s more enjoyable: her reaction to Godard\u2019s direction to \u201cmake the saddest shot in the history of cinema,\u201d or what she delivers. Nouvelle Vague <\/em>never quite transcends the gimmickry of what it\u2019s doing, but it\u2019s diverting enough, and if it gets a few curious Netflix viewers to seek out Breathless<\/em> or The 400 Blows<\/em>, well, that\u2019s an unalloyed good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Nouvelle Vague” is in theaters this weekend. It streams on Netflix on November 14.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nouvelle-vague2-1024x683.jpg\")
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