Nouvelle Vague

Rated R • Netflix

It is a remarkable thing how much youthful passion still flows through the works of Richard Linklater. After nearly 40 years in the industry, his films still have a wild desire to experiment and tell humane, lovely stories. His recent work with Netflix has seemingly only skyrocketed this approach with offbeat films like Hit Man and Apollo 10½.

Nouvelle Vague is no different in this, feeling like the relaxed hangout movies he’s known for and a pithy dramatization of a million film school lectures about narrative storytelling being overrated and the power of creativity, wrapped in a love story to film.

Set against the 1950s French New Wave, the radical youths writing Cahiers Du Cinema are making waves when their most radical member, Jean-Luc Godard, seizes his opportunity to direct his first film, which will become one of the most influential art house films in history, Breathless.

In one of Nouvelle Vague’s most interesting scenes, Roberto Rossellini lectures Godard that real art comes from the simplicity of having something to say. Godard takes this to heart, declaring, “Now is the time to transform ideas into clear images. All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” His approach proves to be so radical and freewheeling that his vision and process make no sense. His producer lambasts his laziness, and his lead actress dismisses it as a glorified home movie.

What Linklatter shares with Godard is a mystical reverence for film. These characters consider cinema their religion. They talk of great directors as scriptures and actresses as saints. They see their works as mystical, even as their own lives are thoroughly secular. The film itself constantly stops to freeze-frame on the faces of important figures in the history of French cinema. It’s indulgent, but boyishly reverent.

Nouvelle Vague is rated R for strong language and contains scenes of smoking and alcohol consumption.