Nouvelle Vague
Today I went to see Nouvelle Vague (2025). It depicts the filming of Breathless (orig: À bout de souffle), an important example of French New Wave cinema, and does so in the style of the time. Director Richard Linklater has said that he intended the film to seem as if it could have plausibly been shot by another director in the movement working at the same time.
I’ll here continue the ongoing tradition of breaking my own rule of not reviewing the movies I watch by saying it was good! I liked it!
In the movie, long-time film critic Jean-Luc Godard takes on the task of directing his first movie, which is to serve as “the greatest criticism” by depicting the way he believes a movie should be. His distinct approach to filmmaking is jarring to the industry veterans that he works with, putting him at loggerheads with both the producer and star. In the end he succeeds at working the way he wants to and releases the movie to acclaim.
That’s a very familiar shape of story. I’ve seen a whole passel of movies and books starring the brilliant underdog who knows just how to do the thing right, if they can just overcome the stick-in-the-mud academy/teacher/boss who stands in their way. For some examples, see Skyward, Amadeus, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and 17-year-old Zane in his fantasies. And yet despite fitting that shape narratively, Nouvelle Vague carries none of the righteousness that I would have thought was necessary to the trope. It does not feel like Godard is a genius and the producer a bozo, and there is no lasting enmity or redemptive moment of “you were right Mr Godard, we see the light now”. What’s left is a very healthy depiction of normal people having differences, getting frustrated, and showing up to work anyhow.
Godard has a strong vision for what he will film and how his crew will make it happen, and he is rarely willing to compromise with his coworkers. At the same time, he does not need to be the smartest person in the room, or be seen as having all the answers. If he has no ideas to film on the day, he cancels or cuts short production. If his tooth hurts and he can’t think of anything to put to film, he sends everyone home. He’s perfectly content to sit in the café with his notebook and papers trying to come up with what comes next, while the cast and crew sit around drinking, chatting, and dancing. That would embarrass me to tears! I flush just thinking about it. I’ve cut Dungeons and Dragons sessions short for the same reason, and it always feels like failure. Something to learn from Godard, then.
A model behavior too, is the way that the members of the movement discuss each other’s films. In the opening scene Godard and friends watch the new movie from Georges de Beauregard. At the party afterward, Beauregard asks Godard what he thinks, and Godard tells him the film is terrible. Beauregard replies cheerily that Godard is his favorite film critic, and the two have a drink. This resilience in the face of criticism is the domain of a man comfortable in his own worth. Quiet confidence: not the fragile arrogance that everything you make is golden, but the acceptance that you are not your work, and a failed act does not a failed man make.
That same confidence, focused in attention but detached from shame, is I think what gives this Godard his power to accept his flubs and sail through chaos to the finish line. I’m not sure how one disentangles those shame-fibers that have grown through their mind-cloth. An ongoing project, in my case.
Today’s graveyard section is short, just Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Eh? Meh? Not a lot interesting to say about it. Someone said once that a movie should pass the “refrigerator test”: that is, if you’re enthralled by the magic moving picture at the theater, and don’t think of a plothole or objection to the movie until you’re at home staring into your fridge’s cavernous receptacle of sandwich meats, then the movie has succeeded. Fridge thoughts don’t count. GLHFDD did not pass the fridge test. Both predictable and incoherent. Still, a fun modern B-movie if you just want some spectacle that touches on contemporary themes.
That’s all for today! May you find the self-assuredness of the New Wave in your own world.
Zane