Making the Wave New Again

At a recent screening at the Directors Guild of America in New York City, Richard Linklater said that the only criterion for his French film crew was that they be “film freaks” like him. Indeed, Linklater lets his freak flag fly in Nouvelle Vague – his imagined “making of” Un Bout de Souffle (Breathless) by Jean Luc Godard, the seminal film of the French Nouvelle Vague (the New Wave) that provides Linklater’s film with its title.

Nouvelle Vague ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written by: Holly Gent, Laetitia Masson, Vincent Palmo Jr.
Starring: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin
Running time: 106 mins

Nouvelle Vague is a love letter to Breathless, though it doesn’t quite emulate it. Not only did Linklater meticulously recreate shots from Godard’s film, he captured them with the actual camera Godard used to shoot his 1960 debut effort. What’s more, he opted to shoot the entirety of his film – action behind the scenes and in front of the camera – in French, in black and white, and in 4:3 aspect ratio. As a filmmaker, Linklater is not looking back on Breathless through a contemporary lens, but building a period piece. Despite his evident admiration of the New Wave, he maintains a documentarian’s objectivity. Or aims to.

By his own admission, and as shown by his technically innovative use of rotoscoping in A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life, long term projects like Boyhood and the Before trilogy, as well as another period piece, Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater is a meticulous filmmaker. He prefers a lengthy rehearsal process, which includes workshopping the script and then rewriting it around the actors. Zoe Deutch, who plays American actress Jean Seberg (Patricia in Breathless), joked that ever since Linklater worked a personal story she shared in rehearsal into the script for the 2016 film Everybody Wants Some, she tries to sound intelligent in his presence. For Nouvelle Vague, preparations also included extensive accent and dialect work (not only was Seberg from Ohio, Godard was Swiss and spoke French with a particular accent), and detailed blocking rehearsals to recreate scenes accurately to the frame.

An essential element in Linklater’s preparation for this film was casting. He had had Deutch in mind since they had worked together in 2016, when he wisely recognized that she had a Seberg-like quality (an indication of how long he has been ruminating on this project). The remaining ensemble was cast in France. In Guillaume Marbeck and Aubry Dolin, Linklater found good energetic matches for Godard and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo (Michel in Breathless), respectively. Neither actor was very experienced, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that Deutch, whose character also has the most interesting journey, delivers the most nuanced performance.

Though Nouvelle Vague is an homage to Godard, Linklater doesn’t shy away from portraying him as a difficult, petulant, enfant terrible. He is cavalier, seemingly unserious, sometimes wrapping a shoot day after only one take. In Nouvelle Vague, Godard makes both his investors and his leading lady nervous. Seberg, in Linklater’s telling, asks her manager husband to get her out of the film, for fear it will jeopardize her career. (Nouvelle Vague’s conclusion features short biographies of what followed for each of our main characters, and Seberg’s notes that her obituary (she passed away at 40), referred to her as “the actress in Breathless” assuring us that Godard was a genius and it was all worth it, after all).

On some level, despite his attempt at historical fiction, Linklater’s film is made for a contemporary audience. The result is a revisionist history, a rose-tinted one that avoids the rampant sexism of the original. This is an opportunity missed. Breathless is a product of its time, and a pretty sexist one. While driving a stolen car through the French countryside, the protagonist, Michel, slows down for, but then doesn’t pick up two female hitchhikers because they’re “dogs,” then muses to himself that “women drivers are cowardice personified.” In his scene recreations, Linklater avoids the sexist bits that might be hard for a modern audience to swallow.

Admittedly, as a contemporary female viewer, I find the misogynist language in Breathless off-putting, while I can also see how, structurally, Michel’s disregard for women frames his relationship with Patricia. I don’t know how Linklater should have engaged with this element of the film, or of 1960’s France, but I feel like he took the easy way out and I wish he hadn’t. Both his film and his Breathless lose something in its omission.

Ironically, the one line that redeemed some of the sexism in Breathless was, in this French speaker’s opinion, mistranslated in Nouvelle Vague. (Linklater takes responsibility for the translations, which further confuses the matter). An acquaintance wonders at Michel’s affection for this American woman – he is, after all, a womanizer, who thinks little of the women in his life, including his – and asks if she’s pretty. He answers, “Elle est drôle. Je l’aime.” (“She’s funny. I like her.”) A person who is funny is often witty, which implies intelligence, which suggests that there’s more to them than meets the eye. But in Nouvelle Vague, the English subtitle reads, “She’s cute. I like her,” an interpretation that does a disservice to both characters. It is too much to say that Linklater, even if unwittingly, perpetuates Breathless’ misogyny, but this scene will leave anyone who speaks French, or has recently watched Breathless, scratching their head. In the original, this moment redeems Michel and makes the relationship make sense. It gives the female viewer purchase, and the film’s conclusion gravitas. I missed it.

If Marbeck’s Godard can be infuriating, Dolin’s affable, charming Belmondo puts his skeptical co-star (and the audience) at ease. As the behind the scenes tension eases, Linklater treats his audience to moments of levity, and it’s fun to see the lengths to which Godard and his innovative cinematographer, Raoul Cotard (Matthieu Penchinat), a seasoned war photographer who was tasked with shooting hand held with only natural light, go to “get the shot,” or capture unsuspecting pedestrians as background. Linklater’s admiration for Godard shines through. It’s not surprising. Though their directorial approaches may diverge, they have a lot in common.

Godard and Linklater both devoted their lives to film, not just as filmmakers, but as cinephiles and students of the art form. In Nouvelle Vague, when a member of the boundary-pushing Cahiers du Cinéma journal squad leans into Truffaut at Cannes saying, “Film is not a passion but a priesthood,” it seems like that’s a chorus Linklater would join.

But, if Linklater owes his career, or some of the freedom he has enjoyed as an auteur, to Godard and his new wave, I wonder what his idol would make of this studiously un-spontaneous effort.

Godard aimed to create a cinema that could capture freedom and spontaneity on screen. To do so, he eschewed many of the traditional methods of the day and, along with other filmmakers in the New Wave, ushered in a new era of filmmaking. Using a handheld camera and natural light, he opted for jump cuts rather than multiple shot set-ups and waited until the day of filming to give actors their lines, frequently shooting only one take to keep things “fresh.” This was possible, in part, because he shot without sound, which allowed him to call out instructions and feed lines to actors while filming. If we accept Linklater’s version as accurate, Godard would refuse to sacrifice the veracity of a moment for continuity – cigarettes change length and glasses of water mysteriously migrate. For his film to feel alive in the moment, he needed his set to live in the moment, to make choices and discoveries for the first time, in real time. And it worked. At least, it worked on me. Despite my intellectual misgivings early on, by the time the police were on their way (no spoilers), I was riveted and didn’t really catch my breath until the credits. Vraiment.

There is an old argument among actors and directors, especially in film, about the pros and cons of rehearsal and multiple takes. Some argue that things must be unrehearsed to be spontaneous, others argue that rehearsal and repetition allow for the discovery of new layers and different choices which may be more surprising and original than an actor’s first instinct. Certainly in theatre, actors rely on technique to discover their words and actions anew eight shows a week, often for weeks, months, even years on end. But the stage is an actor’s medium – when the curtain rises on opening night and the director takes a seat in the audience, the performers tell the story. Film, on the other hand — particularly in the hands of an “Auteur” — is the director’s medium. If the directors had quite different approaches, both ensured their visions were realized. Godard could accomplish his goals without rehearsal in part because he could feed his actors lines and actions in real time, using them like puppets. Linklater, who shot with sync sound, did not have this luxury, and so used rehearsal to shape performances, gestures and accents, and orchestrate camera moves, matching shots and creating his imagined history and its aesthetic.

As was the case with Breathless, I was surprised by how swept up I was by the end of Nouvelle Vague. I liked the characters. I wanted them to succeed. Deutch’s work was lovely. But I was breathing just fine.