Richard Linklater’s latest film, Nouvelle Vague, has found a home, with Netflix purchasing the rights for $4 million. That deal, according to Deadline, is the highest-ever domestic plan for a French-language film. Ooh la la!
Nouvelle Vague is undoubtedly a love letter to cinema, as Richard Linklater chronicles the making of 1960’s Breathless, which wasn’t only Jean-Luc Godard’s debut film but also changed the landscape of international film through its innovative use of camerawork, sound and editing, most notably seen in its famed jump cuts.
To bring the production of Breathless (À bout de souffle) to life in Nouvelle Vague, Linklater recruited Guillaume Marbeck to play Goard, Zoey Deutch as lead Jean Seberg and Aubry Dullin as star Jean-Paul Belmondo. There, too, are a number of other iconic international figures featured in Nouvelle Vague, including cinematographer Raoul Cotard (Matthieu Penchinat), along with fellow French New Wave directors François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson) and Éric Rohmer (Côme Thieulin). Also to be depicted are Agnès Varda, Jacques Rivette and Jean Cocteau.,
One of Richard Linklater’s other goals for Nouvelle Vague was to model the tone set forth in Breathless itself. Speaking with IndieWire, he said, “You always want to make it look easy. The jazz musician who says, “Oh, wait, we just improv,” or John Cassavetes, ‘oh, that whole movie was an improv.’ You don’t want to show the sweat behind it. So you want to make it feel easy. Behind it is a lot of work, and you hide all that. That’s what this was. It’s unbelievable, the meticulous detail and work that goes into recreating something. Oh, geez. Fortunately, we have a lot of documentation, all the photo.”
No official release date has been set for Nouvelle Vague at Netflix, but it’s also expected to receive a theatrical run to qualify for awards. We do have to wonder, however, just what Godard himself would think of any of this…
Nouvelle Vague had its premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or. That ultimately went to Jafar Panachi’s It Was Just an Accident.
Are you excited to see Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague? Are you a fan of Breathless and Jean-Luc Godard?
