TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025 REVIEW! Nouvelle Vague, the latest and perhaps greatest feature from Richard Linklater, tells the story of the creation and shooting of Breathless, by Jean-Luc Godard. It does that with verve, wit, and an astounding attention to precision and detail. By extension, it gives us a look into the French New Wave and the transformation of cinema that would result from it. While that may be what’s going on on the surface, this film contains multitudes in craft, resonance, and meaning. It is the kind of masterclass in filmmaking that should be taught right alongside Breathless in film school.
It is 1959, and Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), a writer for Cahiers du Cinéma, is desperate to direct a feature. His contemporaries, like Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut, have already made films, and Goddard feels like he’s being left behind. With the help of Chabrol and Truffaut, Goddard convinces producer Georges de Beauregard to let him make a film based on a treatment by Truffaut.
Nouvelle Vague. (L-R) Guillaume Marbeck as Jean Luc Godard and Aubry Dullin as Jean-paul Belmondo in Nouvelle Vague. Cr. Jean-Louis Fernandez/Courtesy of Netflix
“It is 1959, and Jean-Luc Goddard (Guillaume Marbeck), a writer for Cahiers du Cinéma, is desperate to direct a feature”
The film was to be based on a story that Truffaut read in the newspaper about Michel Portail and his American girlfriend, Beverly Lynette. In the real-life story, Portail stole a car and killed a cop, but for Goddard, the treatment by Truffaut was little more than an excuse to get the film made using his own ideas, emphasizing spontaneity and capturing real life. He hires Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), whom he had worked with on a short film, to play the male lead, and American actress Jean Seberg, who was much better known, to play the leading lady.
Goddard wants to forego lighting, which necessitates some rather crazy film and camera choices, prohibiting the capturing of synchronized sound. This allows him to have a nimble crew, even hiding the camera in a wagon, allowing them to secretly use the people of Paris as extras. He’s so obsessed with spontaneity that he writes the film as he goes, and some days will only shoot for a few hours until he runs out of inspiration. His seeming madness brings him to blows with the producer, and causes Seberg to worry about what she’s gotten herself into.
"…Linklater was a visionary experimenter in his youth, but now he’s grown into a true master..."
