Valdone Rudenkiene/Cannes
The film Nouvelle Vague, which received nearly seven minutes of applause at Cannes, marks Linklater’s first project in the French language.
It tells the story of the making of the legendary French New Wave film Breathless (À bout de souffle). Guillaume Marbeck portrays the iconic French director Jean-Luc Godard, Zoey Deutch plays the lead female role as Jean Seberg, and Aubry Dullin takes on the part of Jean-Paul Belmondo. The actors are not only strikingly similar to their legendary counterparts—they also exude a natural charisma, improvising, joking, and flirting with one another. This playful, lively interaction breathes life into the technically precise film and evokes the atmosphere of the 66-year-old original, which still feels fresh today.
American director Linklater has repeatedly emphasized that Godard is one of his greatest artistic inspirations, making Nouvelle Vague a deeply personal and passion-driven project for him.
“It’s a love letter to French cinema, to the writers of Cahiers du Cinéma, and to the revolutionary New Wave of the 1960s.”
Linklater’s film feels as though it was made specifically for the Cannes Film Festival—it even includes several inside jokes about Cannes that drew gentle smiles from audiences during screenings. Though light and playful in tone, the film is masterfully crafted—from the incredibly accurate casting (…) to the energetic, jazzy soundtrack, writes Ben Croll in The Wrap. Nouvelle Vague is not only a love letter to the French New Wave; it also subtly showcases the technical prowess of a director not typically regarded as a virtuoso.
Though romantically playful, Nouvelle Vague often pulses with tension. American star Jean Seberg struggles to understand the new director’s improvisational methods, while the film’s producer is frustrated that filming lasts only an hour a day—sometimes not at all. Godard, it turns out, is a true devotee of “stillness”: he happily smokes, drinks, strolls around, or plays pinball, waiting for reality to reveal itself. As he tells Seberg when she asks for clarity:
“I know. I understand. And I don’t care.”
This tension between director and crew forms the film’s main dramatic thread, though the film itself never becomes too intense. Even if you don’t know how Breathless ends, the mere fact that a prestigious biopic is being made about it 60 years later—and premiering at Cannes—should hint at its success. Instead, Nouvelle Vague delights in the act of pausing—watching the chemistry bloom between Seberg and Belmondo, while the director slowly finds his voice.
“If they never let you direct again, you’ll make a great dolly grip,” jokes the cameraman.
The Nouvelle Vague premiere was full of energy from the very beginning. Director Richard Linklater and actress Zoey Deutch sang and danced on the red carpet as they ascended the iconic steps.
“It means so much for us to be here tonight. Just over a year ago, we were filming right here,” said Linklater to the audience gathered for the premiere, who greeted the film with extended applause. “Back then, we said: ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could come back and show our film here?’”
This year, Linklater is cementing his position as a key figure on the film festival circuit. In February, he appeared at the Berlin International Film Festival, where he presented another film — Blue Moon, a musical biographical drama about Lorenz Hart, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, and Andrew Scott. The film was well received, and Scott won the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance.
Although Nouvelle Vague premiered in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, it ultimately left without any awards — a result that left some critics disappointed. According to a few, the film lacked the structure and cinematic spirit that permeated Breathless, the film it pays tribute to. Still, many agree that this homage to a cinematic revolution born over sixty years ago speaks in a new language today — one distinctly Linklater’s own.