New Wave French Cinema Comes Alive in "Nouvelle Vague"

Richard Linklater is a director who loves movies. It is evident by the way he takes chances, switches up genres, and even jumps between live-action and animation. He directed two films this year. One was "Blue Moon," which is the typical mainstream biopic that appeals to mass audiences (though those audiences, I'm sorry to say, appear to be missing out). Over at Netflix, he's directing what I can only assume is a passion project: "Nouvelle Vague." Telling the story of how Jean-Luc Godard made the masterpiece "Breathless," this is the sort of movie that is made by cinema lovers, for cinema lovers.

Shot during the beginning of the French New Wave cinema, "Breathless" is considered one of the greatest films ever made, eschewing traditional filmmaking methods for a more natural approach. Jean-Luc would write pages of the screenplay on the days of shooting, frustrate his producer with short shooting days (or unplanned "days off"), and wanted his film to breath life to the point where he would rarely do more than two takes of a scene (though a car crash didn't work out to the point where he decided to reconstruct the scene, showing he wasn't completely against planning a shot).

"Nouvelle Vague" not only tells this story with great characters and passion, but it was shot in a way to evoke the feeling of a New Wave French cinema film itself. While Linklater admitted that "Nouvelle Vague" has more planning and post-production than Jean-Luc would have done, as a viewer, you would never know this. The France of the 50s has been recreated with great care, and those who have seen "Breathless" as many times as I have (who knows how many that is) will be taken aback at how closely the scenes and sets resemble the actual movie. Linklater is not only telling a great story about the making of a classic; he is telling it in the very style and method the movie was made in.

Considering this is the man who made "Dazed and Confused" all those years ago, Linklater knows a thing or two about how effective a free-flowing narrative can be at sucking an audience in. It is even shot in black and white in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, adding an extra flair of nostalgia in the mix. There's a good chance many of you are reading this review and are unfamiliar with much of what I am talking about. It's hard enough for more modern filmgoers to be aware of classic cinema from America, much less classic cinema from an international country like France.

This is what makes "Nouvelle Vague" an even greater gift to cinema: Linklater is helping keep the memory of a time period alive in a way that, should viewers decide to dive into that time period, they have been given a taste of what that cinema feels like, and it makes the transition easier for the viewer beginning their journey. There is, sadly, the reality that must be addressed in that many of these viewers will be seeing "Nouvelle Vague" on Netflix as opposed to in a movie theater. I was fortunate enough to see this movie in a movie theater with a 35mm film projector. The atmosphere this provided made it feel like I was in France in the 50s, and this is simply not an experience that can be replicated at home.

At the same time, I also understand why this was going to be a tough sell to audiences in America. Netflix paid a high $4 million for the rights to the film, which is more money than most international movies can ever dream of making at the box office here. At the very least, "Nouvelle Vague" will be pushed to not only a wide audience of millions on Netflix, but for many, this will be their first taste of what New Wave French cinema feels like. And hey, if that inspires people to sign up to The Criterion Channel to watch the real thing afterwards, then I can think of no better outcome for what is one of the best films of the year.