Linklater Channels Godard … and Reveals Himself

Inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 game-changer, À Bout De Souffle (Breathless), Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) turns historical autofiction into an ode to first-time filmmaking. His take is both cautionary and empowering. Rather than go full film school, he delivers a comedy about film history legends with the same light touch that brought his own high school classmates to life. While Godard devotees may be Nouvelle Vague’s biggest fans, there’s a jaunty universality to this making-of tribute that will surely inspire new fans of the old wave. Or even inspire a new New Wave.

Just don’t expect to see Godard’s version of Godard. Linklater’s latest is an all-in-one love letter to building community, to creative experimentation and the art of directing—with an unexpectedly personal spin. Instead of jump cuts, Nouvelle Vague prioritizes personality: the mindsets that challenged the medium as opposed to techniques.

With a taut script penned by Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr.—the same team who scripted Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles and Where’d You Go, Bernadette (two other portraits of difficult artists)—this film portrays revered characters from film history like a cadre of recent NYU grads. The young Jean-Luc Godard (overconfident Guillaume Marbeck) rubs elbows and egos with Jean Seberg (delightful Zoey Deutch), Jean-Paul Belmondo (uncanny Aubry Dullin), Georges de Beauregard (blustering Bruno Dreyfürst) Raoul Coutard (easygoing Matthieu Penchinat), Francois Truffaut (brotherly Adrien Rouyard), many more… Cinema pioneers all, their low-budget, auteur-driven films spurned Hollywood epics and embraced spontaneity. Realism.

And Linklater makes them feel real.

Playful but precise, Nouvelle Vague is firmly focused on 1959—the year when Godard’s Breathless was being filmed on Paris streets without script or permits. Dialogue was written on the spot; the actors had little time to rehearse. Natural light was a given. Linklater goes to great lengths to replicate the film’s visual impact—black & white footage, 4:3 aspect ratio, look-alike casting (even the extras)—but even more effective, he gives us down-to-earth glimpses of his own New Wave heroes. Along with moments of brilliance, these legends complain, they equivocate, they reveal insecurities. Some ideas misfire; even so, they persist. And we almost feel as if we’re part of their film crews.

In sum, whether intended or not, Novelle Vague is far more than a historical re-creation. By paying homage to Godard and his cohort, Linklater turns the lens on himself. On his own understanding of boundary-breaking, on its rewards and inherent dangers. Sure, film nerds obsessed with Godard will have fun pointing out where Linklater did appropriate homework versus where he took creative liberties—but at its heart, this film celebrates risk-taking. And has the courage to laugh, not at it, but with it.

Is it a coincidence that Nouvelle Vague will be released in tandem with Linklater’s ‘other’ 2025 feature, Blue Moon? He calls the dual release serendipity, but there’s a synergy here. Both films gestated for over a decade, both films are dialogue-driven character studies, both films explore the artist’s journey: one focused on an emerging filmmaker, the other on a troubled lyricist. Both films have their place in Linklater’s canon; but their collective impact—the sunrise and sunset of two separate careers—is even more telling than each film on its own.

These two films, like so much of his oeuvre, are about potential. About our potential not just as artists, but as human beings.

Little wonder that a movement known for bucking tradition caught Linklater’s attention: our need as a species to keep evolving, to search for fulfillment on our own terms, is a constant. Sometimes futile, often breathless, but worth it.