Nouvelle Vague (2025) dir. Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater’s chronicling of the production of Breathless is certainly charming, but it can’t quite escape its period.

One thing I’m always worried about when I’m writing reviews is how pretentious I’ll sound. It’s something I’ve been told to forget about, and something I should always keep in mind. On the one hand, I should write critically and with inspiration. On the other, I don’t want to sound like a total fucking asshole.

Richard Linklater understands. His films such as Dazed and Confused (1993) and Boyhood (2015) capture young people at their most authentic, whether it’s struggling to survive high school or falling in love for the first time. As such, directing a story about the making of one of the most influential films of all time seems like a step outside of bounds, but Linklater manages to make this comedic film feel like a documentary.

We’re thrown right into Jean-Luc Godard’s shoes as he laments at how he hasn’t directed a film yet, despite most of his contemporaries in the French New Wave already done so. He has a ton of ideas about what he wants, but he’s pigeonholed as a critic and thus has few options. So when he’s finally given the chance, he jumps at it.

I felt like I was stepping into history. There’s shots where legendary figures from the French New Wave such as François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol stare into the camera with neutral expressions, with their names at the bottom of the screen. While this massive amount of historical cameos is certainly exciting for cinephiles like myself who are watching, I couldn’t help but think about the average cinemagoer who would stumble across this film on Netflix and just be totally bewildered.

Linklater perfectly captures the chaos of Breathless, but sometimes he gets lost in the sauce. Godard never shoots for more than 4 hours a day. He writes by the seat of his pants. He ignores continuity errors and imperfections in favor of capturing life at its most authentic. He drops literary and philosophical quotes about cinema so constantly you wonder if he has any personality behind his sunglasses. There’s rarely a quiet moment in the film, but you have to wonder at a certain point if there should be.

To give Linklater some credit, this film has a lot of baggage on its shoulders. Doing a movie about the making of one of the most iconic movies of all time is quite possibly one of the most movie things you can do. It seems impossible, too heavy of a responsibility to pull it off successfully. And I will say the story does a great job of capturing what it was like to make a movie at the time. When so many people are trying to break the mold, making something that threatens to break the mold even further can feel terrifying. With this film, doing a straight-and-narrow biopic about the groundbreaking Breathless feels anticlimactic.

I’ve been sorting out my feelings on this film for a while, and I have to say, as much as I enjoyed it when I first watched it, it hasn’t held up. I like it more than Jay Kelly (2025), but it shares similar flaws to Noah Baumbach’s film. It tries capturing the hectic nature of show business while focusing on one character’s inner world, and in doing so, stumbles along the way.

FURTHER THOUGHTS

• I hope Zoey Deutch doesn’t fall into the trap of being so bad at French she becomes this season’s Selena Gomez in Emilia Perez.
• Raoul is the true MVP.
• Nothing is more relatable to anyone who has worked in film than cramming yourself into an awkward position with your equipment when trying to film a scene.