• Latest
  • Trending
Nouvelle Vague Review

Nouvelle Vague Review: Cinema’s Lightning in a Bottle

John Travolta

Travolta Lights Up Hollywood Bowl in Surprise Danny Zuko Cameo

32 minutes ago
Rainn Wilson Steve Carell

Rainn Wilson Says The Office “Chaotic” After Carell Exit

37 minutes ago
Sydney Sweeney

Sydney Sweeney Risks Broken Nose for Christy Martin Biopic

41 minutes ago
Joshua Jackson

Mighty Ducks Stars Hand Off Anaheim’s First-Round Pick at NHL Draft

45 minutes ago
Hilary Swank

Cobra Kai Bosses Detail Failed Hilary Swank Cameo Bid

50 minutes ago
Grosse Pointe Garden Society

NBC Kills Grosse Pointe Garden Society After One Season

58 minutes ago
Mark Hamill

Mark Hamill’s Untold Luke Skywalker Tragedy Emerges

1 hour ago
Henry Golding

Henry Golding Calls Bond Bid “A Nightmare” as Amazon’s 007 Overhaul Accelerates

1 hour ago
Stand Your Ground Review

Stand Your Ground Review: All Action, No Substance

The Lightning Code

The Lightning Code Review: Charming and Bright, but Lacks a Shock

Islands & Trains Review

Islands & Trains Review: A Minimalist Escape

Marcella Review

Marcella Review: Finding a Home in Flavor

  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Gazettely Review Guidelines
Sunday, June 29, 2025
GAZETTELY
  • Home
  • Movie and TV News
    John Travolta

    Travolta Lights Up Hollywood Bowl in Surprise Danny Zuko Cameo

    Rainn Wilson Steve Carell

    Rainn Wilson Says The Office “Chaotic” After Carell Exit

    Sydney Sweeney

    Sydney Sweeney Risks Broken Nose for Christy Martin Biopic

    Joshua Jackson

    Mighty Ducks Stars Hand Off Anaheim’s First-Round Pick at NHL Draft

    Hilary Swank

    Cobra Kai Bosses Detail Failed Hilary Swank Cameo Bid

    Grosse Pointe Garden Society

    NBC Kills Grosse Pointe Garden Society After One Season

    Mark Hamill

    Mark Hamill’s Untold Luke Skywalker Tragedy Emerges

    Henry Golding

    Henry Golding Calls Bond Bid “A Nightmare” as Amazon’s 007 Overhaul Accelerates

    squid game season 3

    Netflix Crowns ‘Squid Game’ Finale No. 1 as Creator Weighs Spinoff

  • Movie and TV Reviews
    Stand Your Ground Review

    Stand Your Ground Review: All Action, No Substance

    The Lightning Code

    The Lightning Code Review: Charming and Bright, but Lacks a Shock

    Marcella Review

    Marcella Review: Finding a Home in Flavor

    Wick Is Pain Review

    Wick Is Pain Review: The Real-World Cost of a Fictional Universe

    Sniper The Last Stand Review

    Sniper: The Last Stand Review: Anchored by a Confident Hero

    Last Bullet Review

    Last Bullet Review: Going Out with a Bang

    Swing Bout Review

    Swing Bout Review: A Brutal Fight Outside the Ring

    Murder Has Two Faces Season 1 Review

    Murder Has Two Faces Season 1 Review: Who Gets Remembered?

    Dalia and the Red Book Review

    Dalia and the Red Book Review: Writing Your Own Escape from Grief

  • Game Reviews
    Islands & Trains Review

    Islands & Trains Review: A Minimalist Escape

    PaperKlay Review

    PaperKlay Review: Fun, Flawed, and Full of Heart

    Projected Dreams Review

    Projected Dreams Review: Illuminating a Beautiful Story

    Tom Clancy's The Division 2: Battle for Brooklyn Review

    Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: Battle for Brooklyn Review: A Nostalgic But Flawed Homecoming

    9 Kings Review

    9 Kings Review: Seven Monarchs, Endless Strategic Possibilities

    Rematch Review

    Rematch Review: Sloclap’s Ambitious Football Experiment Falls Short of Goals

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review: Forging a Path Through the Past

    JDM Japanese Drift Master Review

    JDM: Japanese Drift Master Review – When Mechanics Meet Manga

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review: A Bloody Good Idea, Poorly Executed

  • The Bests
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Movie and TV News
    John Travolta

    Travolta Lights Up Hollywood Bowl in Surprise Danny Zuko Cameo

    Rainn Wilson Steve Carell

    Rainn Wilson Says The Office “Chaotic” After Carell Exit

    Sydney Sweeney

    Sydney Sweeney Risks Broken Nose for Christy Martin Biopic

    Joshua Jackson

    Mighty Ducks Stars Hand Off Anaheim’s First-Round Pick at NHL Draft

    Hilary Swank

    Cobra Kai Bosses Detail Failed Hilary Swank Cameo Bid

    Grosse Pointe Garden Society

    NBC Kills Grosse Pointe Garden Society After One Season

    Mark Hamill

    Mark Hamill’s Untold Luke Skywalker Tragedy Emerges

    Henry Golding

    Henry Golding Calls Bond Bid “A Nightmare” as Amazon’s 007 Overhaul Accelerates

    squid game season 3

    Netflix Crowns ‘Squid Game’ Finale No. 1 as Creator Weighs Spinoff

  • Movie and TV Reviews
    Stand Your Ground Review

    Stand Your Ground Review: All Action, No Substance

    The Lightning Code

    The Lightning Code Review: Charming and Bright, but Lacks a Shock

    Marcella Review

    Marcella Review: Finding a Home in Flavor

    Wick Is Pain Review

    Wick Is Pain Review: The Real-World Cost of a Fictional Universe

    Sniper The Last Stand Review

    Sniper: The Last Stand Review: Anchored by a Confident Hero

    Last Bullet Review

    Last Bullet Review: Going Out with a Bang

    Swing Bout Review

    Swing Bout Review: A Brutal Fight Outside the Ring

    Murder Has Two Faces Season 1 Review

    Murder Has Two Faces Season 1 Review: Who Gets Remembered?

    Dalia and the Red Book Review

    Dalia and the Red Book Review: Writing Your Own Escape from Grief

  • Game Reviews
    Islands & Trains Review

    Islands & Trains Review: A Minimalist Escape

    PaperKlay Review

    PaperKlay Review: Fun, Flawed, and Full of Heart

    Projected Dreams Review

    Projected Dreams Review: Illuminating a Beautiful Story

    Tom Clancy's The Division 2: Battle for Brooklyn Review

    Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: Battle for Brooklyn Review: A Nostalgic But Flawed Homecoming

    9 Kings Review

    9 Kings Review: Seven Monarchs, Endless Strategic Possibilities

    Rematch Review

    Rematch Review: Sloclap’s Ambitious Football Experiment Falls Short of Goals

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review

    Chronicles of the Wolf Review: Forging a Path Through the Past

    JDM Japanese Drift Master Review

    JDM: Japanese Drift Master Review – When Mechanics Meet Manga

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review

    Blood Bar Tycoon Review: A Bloody Good Idea, Poorly Executed

  • The Bests
No Result
View All Result
GAZETTELY
No Result
View All Result
Nouvelle Vague Review

Dangerous Animals Review: Swimming in a Sea of Complicity

Renoir Review: The Liminal World of Fuki’s Mind

Home Entertainment Movies

Nouvelle Vague Review: Cinema’s Lightning in a Bottle

Naser Nahandian by Naser Nahandian
1 month ago
in Entertainment, Movies, Reviews
Reading Time: 5 mins read
A A
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on PinterestShare on WhatsAppShare on Telegram

In Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater returns to the monochrome crucible of cinema’s youth, fashioning a 2024 sight-and-sound echo of Paris in 1959. Shot in French, framed in an Academy-ratio canvas, and rendered in high-contrast black-and-white, the film dramatizes Jean-Luc Godard’s birth-pangs as he conceives Breathless. Here, every gutter of light is an invitation to the unexpected, and each scratch of jazz on the soundtrack feels like a pulse in the night.

Linklater sets the scene on rain-slicked cobblestones and in cafés where cigarette smoke coils like a whispered confession. His camera glides past ragged film magazines and cluttered editing rooms, reminding us that creation can be brutal, thrilling, and absurd.

Through whispered arguments and bright-eyed determination, the story of Godard’s 20-day shoot unfolds as both homage and meditation on artistic risk. An affectionate portrait of youthful revolt, this opening gesture throbs with restless energy—an invitation to wonder whether art is ever truly under our control, or if we are merely conduits for its darker impulses.

Fractured Time and the Alchemy of Chance

Linklater arranges events with clinical clarity—Godard’s simmering envy of Truffaut and Chabrol blooms into a frantic quest for financing, then detonates over a 20-day whirlwind of shooting and editing. The narrative arcs forward without illusion: we witness the director siphoning cash from Cahiers du Cinéma, haggling with his producer, then sprinting into Paris streets clutching scraps of dialogue.

Each morning, Godard scribbles lines on café napkins and dispenses them like cryptic riddles to his cast. Actors learn their roles in real time, inhaling words as they emerge, and when inspiration evaporates, he simply calls it quits—an empty studio until the muse returns. That improvisational rule both liberates and torments, as if creativity itself were a fickle deity.

Moments where film and reality bleed together feel hallucinatory. On day one, the crew stands in a half-lit boulevard with nothing but a single camera and a phantom plan—cinema born from absence. In the editing room, a deluge of footage is trimmed through brutal jump cuts, sculpting coherence from chaos.

Scattered encounters with Rossellini, Melville and Bresson punctuate the storyline, offering cryptic wisdom that haunts Godard long after their cameo. These philosopher-filmmakers appear like specters, reminding us that art may ask endless questions but seldom supplies comforting answers.

Masks of Light and Shadow

Guillaume Marbeck’s Godard glides into view behind perpetual sunglasses—an intentional barrier that both conceals and magnifies his inner turbulence. In quiet cafés, he scribbles dialogue like a philosopher scrawling last rites, his arrogance flickering against moments of brittle self-doubt: a tremor in his voice as he bargains with Georges de Beauregard, then a quiet triumph in the editing suite when his vision, at last, coalesces. Marbeck balances the callous wit of an auteur with the fragile yearning of a man who fears his own emptiness.

Nouvelle Vague Review

Aubry Dullin’s Jean-Paul Belmondo is a study in kinetic levity. He hops rope in the courtyard, cracking a grin even as Godard’s impatience thickens the air. Yet when he staggers bloodied through the final pursuit, there is an implicit question carved into his bruised cheek: what remains of performance when the body aches for authenticity? Dullin’s ease masks an existential core—he is the everyman who performs heroism for a director hungry to capture “reality.”

Zoey Deutch’s Jean Seberg drifts into the fray with a Hollywood glow that rapidly corrodes under the weight of improvisation. Her frustration—voiced in trembling asides, in moments when she whispers “Why?” to the empty set—becomes a meditation on the cost of faith in art. She is torn between the glamour she embodies and the gritty uncertainty that her role demands.

Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) moves like a silent guardian, his camera a shield against chaos. And when Truffaut, Melville or Bresson flit through the frame—spectral mentors offering riddles—they remind us that every performance is both homage and revolution, a fleeting communion between flesh and idea.

The Aesthetics of Memory and Decay

In Nouvelle Vague, each frame feels like a fading photograph, grainy and alive with the patina of time. David Chambille’s camera breathes in deep blacks and corrosive highlights, as though Paris itself were exhaling smoke through a cracked lens. Handheld tracking shots glide down boulevards with restless persistence, and long takes in real locations collapse the divide between spectator and street, invoking Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception—film as lived experience, never fully graspable.

Nouvelle Vague Review

Interior spaces—Cahiers du Cinéma’s cramped office, dimly lit cafés, narrow hotel rooms—are rendered with forensic devotion. Every chipped table edge and peeling wallpaper whispers of bygone ambitions. Costumes echo the era without exaggeration: Seberg’s pixie cut, Belmondo’s aviators, tailored suits that carry both defiance and fragility. They dress bodies burdened by the promise of immortality on celluloid.

The soundtrack pulses with smoky jazz and dance tunes, a heartbeat both seductive and foreboding. On set, the absence of sync sound becomes a philosophical stance: dialogue recorded in post dissolves certainty, as if memory itself were always slightly off-register. Natural ambient noise seeps in—a distant horn, a dog’s bark—reminding us that reality resists containment.

Editing and VFX unite necessity with homage: jump cuts cleave scenes to their barest essence, while digital alchemy erases modern intrusions. In the editing suite, we glimpse cinema’s secret heart—an obscured ritual where chaos is distilled into fleeting coherence, and the illusion of control reveals its own fragility.

Echoes of Rebellion and Creation

Here, the struggle between creative freedom and industrial order becomes a philosophical crucible: Godard’s nightly jottings on café napkins stand in defiance of his producer’s demand for a tidy script. The tension crackles like an electric fault line, asking whether true art can survive beneath contractual constraints or if it must erupt, unpolished and raw.

Nouvelle Vague Review

The film’s DIY ethos is a testament to audacity: a skeleton crew, a camera hidden in a mail cart, natural light as both tool and metaphor for unfiltered reality. Each inventive workaround underscores cinema as a live experiment—an act of survival against scarcity.

Linklater’s homage extends an invitation to those unversed in Breathless, yet the nods to cinephile lore never overshadow the story’s self-sufficiency. Fleeting title cards and whispered cameos become cryptic runes, rewarding the initiated without alienating the curious.

This resurrection of 1959’s creative ferocity resonates in today’s independent landscape, where making a film can still feel like chasing lightning—an impossible task that, when it strikes, redefines what remains possible. Nouvelle Vague premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2025, competing for the Palme d’Or.

Full Credits

Director: Richard Linklater

Writers: Vincent Palmo Jr., Holly Gent, Laetitia Masson, Michèle Halberstadt

Producers: Laurent Pétin, Michèle Pétin, Richard Linklater, Mike Blizzard, John Sloss

Executive Producers: Emmanuel Montamat, John Sloss

Cast: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin, Bruno Dreyfürst, Benjamin Clery, Matthieu Penchinat, Pauline Belle, Blaise Pettebone, Benoît Bouthors, Paolo Luka Noé, Adrien Rouyard, Jade Phan-Gia, Jodie Ruth-Forest, Antoine Besson, Roxane Rivière, Côme Thieulin, Jean-Jacques Le Vessier, Laurent Mothe, Jonas Marmy, Niko Ravel

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): David Chambille

Editor: Catherine Schwartz

The Review

Nouvelle Vague

8 Score

Nouvelle Vague pulses with restless ingenuity, an homage that transcends nostalgia to become its own meditation on creation and chaos. Linklater’s black-and-white canvas and spontaneous rhythms conjure both the punk spirit of Godard and the uneasy beauty of impermanence. Through luminous performances and grain-soaked frames, the film reminds us that cinema remains a daring gamble—one that, when it lands, captures lightning in a bottle.

PROS

  • Evocative black-and-white cinematography that immerses you in 1959 Paris
  • Lively, inventive recreation of Godard’s improvised shooting method
  • Strong central performance by Guillaume Marbeck as the enigmatic auteur
  • Rich period detail in production design and soundtrack
  • Engaging interplay between historical homage and fresh storytelling

CONS

  • Dense cinephile references may alienate viewers unfamiliar with Breathless
  • Occasional narrative fragmentation mirroring its own jump-cut aesthetic
  • Some supporting characters feel under-explored

Review Breakdown

  • Overall 0
Tags: 2025 Cannes Film FestivalARP ProductionsAubry DullinBenjamin CleryBlaise PetteboneBruno DreyfürstComedyDetour FilmproductionFeaturedGuillaume MarbeckMatthieu PenchinatNouvelle VaguePauline BelleRichard LinklaterZoey Deutch
Previous Post

Dangerous Animals Review: Swimming in a Sea of Complicity

Next Post

Renoir Review: The Liminal World of Fuki’s Mind

Try AI Movie Recommender

Gazettely AI Movie Recommender

This Week's Top Reads

  • Smoke Review

    Smoke Review: The Year’s Most Unpredictable and Unsettling Show

    7 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Boglands Review: Shadows and Whispers in the Irish Mist

    2 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Love Island USA Season 7 Review: Summer’s Hottest Guilty Pleasure Returns

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Mix Tape Review: A Story Told on Two Sides of a Cassette

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Alma and the Wolf Review: Ethan Embry Shines in a Flawed Fever Dream

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • She’s Got No Name Review: A Moving Tale of Empathy and Survival

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Waterfront Review: Kevin Williamson’s Return to Murky Family Waters

    1 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Must Read Articles

Heads of State Review
Movies

Heads of State Review: Elba and Cena Carry the Ticket

1 day ago
Squid Game Season 3 Review
Entertainment

Squid Game Season 3 Review: No Happy Endings Here

2 days ago
Love Island USA Season 7 Review
Entertainment

Love Island USA Season 7 Review: Summer’s Hottest Guilty Pleasure Returns

3 days ago
The Bear Season 4 Review
Entertainment

The Bear Season 4 Review: A Contemplative, Cathartic Final Course

3 days ago
Surviving Ohio State Review
Movies

Surviving Ohio State Review: The Weight of Witness

3 days ago
Loading poll ...
Coming Soon
Who is the best director in the horror thriller genre?

Gazettely is your go-to destination for all things gaming, movies, and TV. With fresh reviews, trending articles, and editor picks, we help you stay informed and entertained.

© 2021-2024 All Rights Reserved for Gazettely

What’s Inside

  • Movie & TV Reviews
  • Game Reviews
  • Featured Articles
  • Latest News
  • Editorial Picks

Quick Links

  • Home
  • About US
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise with Us
  • Review Guidelines

Follow Us

Facebook X-twitter Youtube Instagram
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Movies
  • Entertainment News
  • Movie and TV Reviews
  • TV Shows
  • Game News
  • Game Reviews
  • Contact Us

© 2024 All Rights Reserved for Gazettely

Go to mobile version