
American indie darling Richard Linklater ventures into French cinema’s most hallowed ground with mixed results

Richard Linklater’s highly anticipated “Nouvelle Vague” premiered in the main competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival yesterday, offering a meticulous recreation of Jean-Luc Godard’s chaotic filmmaking process during the production of “Breathless” in 1959. The film, shot entirely in French and presented in black and white with a 4:3 aspect ratio, marks an ambitious departure for the American director best known for “Boyhood” and the “Before” trilogy.
“I’ve been thinking about this film for 13 years,” Linklater revealed during yesterday’s press conference, explaining his long fascination with Godard and the birth of the French New Wave. “I had to erase my own history. I felt like I was 28 years old making this film… I had to take away everything I knew. It’s like a first film choice.”

The film stars Guillaume Marbeck as the enigmatic Godard and Zoey Deutch as American actress Jean Seberg, with Aubry Dullin portraying Jean-Paul Belmondo. Shot on location in Paris between March and April 2024, the production received funding from France’s Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC).
Rehearsed Spontaneity

While Godard’s filmmaking was famously improvisational, Linklater took the opposite approach, revealing that he wrote a “rehearsal manifesto” for his actors. Deutch, who portrays Seberg, shed light on this contradiction during the press conference: “Godard was spontaneous. It was freedom, it was magic… We are doing the opposite. We are gonna rehearse so much that there’s no excuse on the day for coming home and going, ‘I should have tried that.'”
Marbeck, who immersed himself in Godard’s early career, described his preparational limits: “I stopped at breathless, because I felt that breathless… he probably had the film in mind before he even made it. So I didn’t allow myself to see the subsequent films and I didn’t read anything that came after ’59.”
The film captures a specific moment in cinema history—the “good years” as Linklater called them, before the relationships among the New Wave directors soured. “This is 1959. These are the good years. They all love each other. Everybody’s happy… there’s something pure and innocent.”
Ego and Indiscipline
Despite the celebratory tone of the press conference, the film itself presents a more complicated portrait of Godard’s methods. Critics have noted parallels to Fellini’s “8½”—a comparison Linklater himself made during the press conference when discussing influences.
What emerges is the story of a filmmaker whose revolutionary approach was powered equally by visionary genius and unchecked ego. Godard’s notorious treatment of actors, particularly women, was briefly addressed when a journalist questioned Linklater about the “darker side” of the director.
Linklater acknowledged this complexity: “He threw off people, male and female… I think the way he communicated or something,” before pivoting to praise he had heard about Godard’s generosity.
Cinema’s Uncertain Future
The press conference also touched on broader concerns about cinema’s future, with Linklater responding to recent comments by “Mission: Impossible” director Christopher McQuarrie about streaming platforms “burying classic cinema for new generations.”
“Every filmmaker, when you make your film, you’re envisioning it with an audience,” Linklater said, while expressing optimism about young cinephiles, whom he dubbed the “Letterbox Generation.”
“There’s a young generation coming along that love movies… It’s all young people coming to the movies. And they’re all online, they’re all talking. And it means a lot to them. They go to the movies and they talk about them.”
Romanticising Chaos
The film itself stands as a meticulously crafted tribute to a filmmaker who rejected such precision—an irony not lost on critics. As one observed after the screening, “Linklater has created a disciplined, loving portrait of indiscipline, making ordered sense of Godard’s beautiful chaos.”
For Linklater, who spent over a decade preparing this project, the film represents both homage and exorcism—a chance to explore the revolutionary techniques that influenced his own early independent work while acknowledging the problematic aspects of genius unbound by conventional constraints.
Whether this American interpretation of French cinema’s most iconoclastic movement will resonate with the Cannes jury remains to be seen, as “Nouvelle Vague” competes for the Palme d’Or against a strong field of international contenders.
The 78th Cannes Film Festival continues through May 24th, with awards to be presented at the closing ceremony.
Editor in Chief of Ikon London Magazine, journalist, film producer and founder of The DAFTA Film Awards (The DAFTAs).