Nouvelle Vague

Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” is a movie in which the making of it has become as famous as the movie itself. After all, it not only helped usher in the vital French New Wave filmmaking movement but essentially ushered in modern movies themselves; as no less an authority than Criterion puts it, “there was before ‘Breathless,’ and there was after ‘Breathless.’” But the movie has become so synonymous with its making because more than most, the production and the completed motion picture are wholly intertwined. By utilizing familiar, rulebound Hollywood genres and then reimagining them through rule-breaking techniques, Godard was not only commenting on and critiquing Hollywood but rendering an intrinsic argument that how a director chooses to tell his or her story makes a movie what it is in the first place. If you watch Richard Linklater’s new Netflix movie “Nouvelle Vague” about the making of Breathless having never seen it, you might come away wondering what, exactly, “Breathless” was about as it remains, well, a little vague on that topic. Yet, it still succeeds not because it’s more about the production than the finished product but because in the way that Godard made movies, the finished product was the production, and vice-versa. To see “Breathless” being made is to see “Breathless.” 

If “Breathless” is inseparable from its making, so, too, is it inseparable from its auteur. Famously, Godard infused his movies with quotes and observations reflecting his own attitudes and philosophies and so Linklater has his perpetual sunglasses-wearing Godard (Guillame Marbeck) communicate almost exclusively in quotes and observations, not like one of his characters but to evoke how his characters were him. His filmmaking methods, meanwhile, deploying a moving camera, not even bothering to look through the viewfinder, eschewing continuity, wears his producer (Bruno Dreyfürst) thin while his star, Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch), ponders jumping ship. In traditional terms, that might make “Nouvelle Vague” an underdog story, but, of course, we know how this story ends, and it’s a testament to Linklater’s carefree style that the proceedings never turn sentimental or solemn. He is a modern master of the hangout movie, after all, and that’s what “Nouvelle Vague” often resembles, its cast and crew in repose in cafes as Godard consults his notebook, bringing his belief that the movie before him exists as a kind of blank page to leisurely life.

As the title suggests, however, “Nouvelle Vague” is not just about the making of “Breathless” but the French New Wave itself. That’s why we see Godard consulting and socialize with esteemed fellow members of the movement. The ones that Linklater cannot manage to squeeze into the narrative he still honors by identifying them via title card while having them look straight into the camera. Yet, despite being a concise evocation of how it takes village, these cameos belie “Nouvelle Vague” as requiring some prior knowledge of its eponymous film movement; this is not necessarily a movie for beginners. But that’s also what fascinates me. Godard was suspicious of Netflix, and it’s more than a little odd that a movie about making “Breathless” would be tucked in there with so many deliberately forgettable titles, just one more to scroll past. But there is something tantalizing about it too. “Weekend” and “Vivre sa vie” were not the first Godard movies I saw, but they were also some of the first times I remember really wondering of movies, “Ok, what is this?” I like imagining unsuspecting people having their curiosity sparked by “Nouvelle Vague,” investigating the movement’s back catalogue and even being inspired to gather some friends and go make something of their own. And that is why Linklater might not have intended this as a love letter so much as a message in a bottle.