At the Cannes Film Festival, "Nouvelle Vague," Richard Linklater's sparkling homage to Jean-Luc Godard

OFFICIAL SELECTION – IN COMPETITION

Halfway through the Cannes competition, a glass of champagne: Nouvelle Vague , a fiction by the American Richard Linklater, which brings to life the eventful filming of A bout de souffle (1960), by Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) , with Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933-2021) and Jean Seberg (1938-1979) , sweeps us away in one go into the vitality of a small team of film buffs, then convinced that they were going to revolutionize cinema.

They weren't wrong. The film was a thunderbolt, pushing aesthetic and narrative boundaries, and placing Godard's name on the pediment of cinematic modernity (along with Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, and Rivette).

The excitement tinged with anxiety of Nouvelle Vague (because Godard has beginner's stage fright) contributes to the charm of this homage work, which seeks nothing less than to tell the story of the making of a free film, breaking with all codes, as one exhibits the roots of a rare plant. Linklater is not the first to revisit the Godardian universe: in another genre, close to pastiche, Michel Hazanavicius had directed Le Redoutable (2017) for Netflix, adapted from the novel by the filmmaker's ex-wife, Anne Wiazemsky , Un an après (Gallimard, 2015), with Louis Garrel in the role of Godard, a political and intimate chronicle, on the troubled end of the 1960s and the breakup of the couple.

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