THE NEW WAVE IS ALIVE & WELL & LIVING ON NETFLIX - My Quick Review of Richard Linklater's NOUVELLE VAGUE

 Might I be a tad pretentious?

If you watched my face react to each reveal of these titans who were part of one of the true great movements of worldwide cinema, you might compare it to someone who was reeling over an Avengers movie. But no...this movement I speak of is what was known in France as Nouvelle Vague or as we call it: The French New Wave. 

An era that began in the late 50s and lasted through the 60s, the term had been coined by the legendary film magazine Cahiers du cinema to essentially describe the work that many of its own writers would go on to create themselves.

You could argue that the shots were fired in 1954 by one its premiere writers, a man by the name of Francois Truffaut. This piece entitled Une certaine tendance du cinéma françai challenged the French film community for their overreliance on unimaginative works based around literary adaptations.

The idea of the movement was to take risks and explore what film could actually be. Experimentation and iconoclasm were the themes du jour, the cinematography and editing would be scrappy and immersive, and embracing existentialism would be welcomed at the expense of something that might be deemed easily accessible or palatable. 

This isn't to say the cinematic aesthetic of the New Wave was that unusual. Italian Neorealism, namely the works of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, certainly showed a grittier edge that would give way to the New Wave. You could argue that the major difference is that the gritty realism of those films gave way to a certain allure among the streets of Paris. 

In fact, there was one American film that Truffaut singled out as being key to capturing the vibe of the New Wave: 1953's Little Fugitive, a film I had seen as a young boy about a kid who ran away from his Brooklyn apartment to Coney Island due to a vicious prank by his older brother and his friends.

Film may be a visual medium, but while these smaller films may lack the sweeping shots of epics of the era like Giant or Lawrence of Arabia, there is something so exciting and vibrant and edgy about how a lot of these films were presented...even when they would eventually be presented in glorious color a la Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. 

While Claude Chabrol's 1958 film Le Beau Serge is usually seen as the first film released in the Nouvelle Vague mold (Agnes Varda's 1955 film La Pointe Courte would not get a commercial release until decades later), it was Francois Truffaut's 1959 masterpiece The 400 Blows that would put the movement on an international scale...and it is that release that begins Linklater's film. 

The 400 Blows is considered to be a masterpiece by everyone within the community...and it truly was. I do consider it to be one of my favorite films of all time, and it is the film I most associate with the movement for that reason. However, there was one critic writing for Cahiers who felt like he was falling behind and he wanted his chance to make his own film following the rapturous plaudits that Truffaut was receiving: Jean-Luc Godard. 

Considering the kind of filmmaker and cultural figure Godard would become, even up to his death in 2022, it does seem crazy to think about his beginnings with Breathless, his 1960 debut film that would further cement the reputation of this group.

Breathless was a film that starred Jean-Paul Belmondo as gangster-loving criminal Michel and Jean Seberg as an American who sells the New York Daily Tribune on the streets of Paris. In Nouvelle Vague, Belmondo is played by Aubry Dullin and Seberg is played by Zoey Deutch. 

These two, along with Guillaume Marbeck as Godard and Adrien Rouyard as Truffaut, are practically overwhelming at capturing the vibe and essence of these legends.

In fact, Zoey Deutch is pretty much a revelation here as Seberg, who has got to be one of the coolest actresses to have ever lived, and she brings her to life in a way that feels like a rare case of an actress truly disappearing into the role. In a just world, I would love to see her in the Oscar conversation. 

I feel like a lot of this review has been more in line with being a history lesson, but a lot of that is due to the fact that this is simply one of those films with a subject matter that truly invigorated me. 

The idea of watching a film that recreates the behind-the-scenes development of one of the most influential films ever made might seem a bit like a tall order that borders on the indulgent...and perhaps that might be true to an extent.

I wouldn't say that Nouvelle Vague is a masterpiece nor a film that I would necessarily revisit regularly, but I found it to be a remarkable love letter to an era of films that I have adored for most of my film buff life.

Richard Linklater has had a great year when you take into account the truly wonderful character study he gave us with Blue Moon, but with Nouvelle Vague, he made early 60s Paris come to life again and I loved being in the world of these icons by proxy of these artists. 

The hilarious thing is that Linklater is basically known as a master of the "hangout film" and in a lot of ways, this film has that vibe as we watch these genius artists reinvent the artform. Maybe this film doesn't reinvent anything necessarily, but I love it for all of the joyous emotions it made this snobby film lover feel.

NOUVELLE VAGUE

Rating: 8.5/10