The Joyful Mythology of "Nouvelle Vague"

""Nouvelle Vague," Richard Linklater's dramatization of the making, in 1959, of Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless," is a nitpicker's delight: any viewer who knows anything about Godard's story can find contrivances, departures from the historical record. I won't bother; if I want the details, I'll read a book. What matters is the way that Linklater transforms a lovingly fictionalized vision of Godard into a stealth form of documentary."

""Nouvelle Vague" (which streams on Netflix starting this Friday) roots Godard in the milieu, and the movement, with which his name and his films are identified. The movie both shows the fashioning of the New Wave as a modern myth and confirms the enduring power of that myth. Linklater's essential subject is the undiminished centrality of the New Wave-the idea of it maybe even more than the movies themselves-to current filmmaking."

Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague' dramatizes the 1959 making of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless' while intentionally blending fiction and documentary to examine the French New Wave. The film acknowledges historical inaccuracies yet uses them to explore how the New Wave became a modern myth. It roots Godard in the cultural milieu and illustrates the movement's fashioning and enduring cultural power. The film treats the New Wave as central to contemporary filmmaking. The title phrase originated in 1957 to describe a postwar generation and only later became associated, somewhat sarcastically at first, with a handful of young filmmakers.

Read at The New Yorker