Festivals - Cannes 2025 : Richard Linklater enchants the Croisette with Nouvelle Vague, a luminous dive into the revolutionary birth of the French New Wave

By Mulder, Cannes, Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes, 17 may 2025

It’s hard to overstate the sense of electricity that filled the Palais des Festivals on the evening of May 17, 2025. As Richard Linklater stepped into the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the air was thick with anticipation. Nouvelle Vague, his long-rumored homage to the genesis of À bout de souffle, finally premiered, and what followed was a euphoric celebration of cinema itself. With black-and-white frames flickering in classic 4:3 format, Richard Linklater’s latest opus wasn't just a film; it was a time capsule, an invitation to walk among the giants of 1959 Paris. When the lights came up after 105 brisk minutes, the audience leapt to its feet, roaring with applause that rang out for over eleven minutes. Quentin Tarantino, no stranger to cinematic exuberance, was among those applauding the loudest—for the second time that very day, having caught a morning screening as well.

Nouvelle Vague is not merely a biopic of Jean-Luc Godard—it’s a vibrant dramatization of the chaotic, inspired making of Breathless, the film that arguably cracked open the mold of 20th-century cinema. Guillaume Marbeck brings Godard to life with uncanny grace, while Zoey Deutch channels the luminous charm and frustration of Jean Seberg, and newcomer Aubry Dullin captures the raw charisma of Jean-Paul Belmondo. Richard Linklater’s direction doesn’t try to polish history; instead, he recreates it with a textured realism that resists nostalgia. From jump cuts to jarring sound design, every frame feels like an act of rebellion. Yet, it’s not a mere mimicry of Godard’s style—it’s an immersion, a kind of cinematic method acting where the film lives and breathes the ethos it portrays.

There’s something delightfully meta about Richard Linklater, a Texan cinephile, using French celluloid to resurrect the very French rebellion that influenced his own filmmaking journey. Watching this film at Cannes felt like witnessing two parallel love letters—the first from Jean-Luc Godard to the possibility of cinema itself in 1959, and the second from Linklater to Godard and his unruly cohort. The film doesn't aim to deify; instead, it presents a wry, warm-hearted anatomy of a revolution. Jean-Luc Godard is portrayed as stubborn, brilliant, insecure, and irreverent. We see him argue with Seberg over makeup (“Can I at least wear something from Prisunic?” she pleads), ignore production schedules, cancel shooting when uninspired, and hand out scripts at the very last moment. His mantra? “More rehearsal just moves us away from life.”

What makes Nouvelle Vague so compelling is Richard Linklater’s ability to humanize myth. These aren’t distant figures from textbooks; they’re friends crashing on each other’s couches, stealing shots on Parisian streets, nervously wondering whether this lo-fi experiment will ever be shown. François Truffaut writes scenes on the metro. Claude Chabrol offers wry advice. The cinematographer hauls around a war-zone camera, shooting without sound sync because that’s what’s available. And amid it all, Jean-Luc Godard mutters quotes and manifests the bizarre belief that something extraordinary is about to happen. Richard Linklater understands that revolution is rarely tidy or confident—it’s messy, exhilarating, and full of doubt.

Part of the film’s brilliance lies in how it mirrors the chaotic aesthetic of Breathless without turning into pastiche. The camera floats with a kinetic freedom, jazz music punctuates awkward silences, and there’s an ever-present sense that rules are being joyfully broken. But Richard Linklater injects his own sense of rhythm and humor. He’s not worshiping the New Wave from a distance—he’s crashing the party and pouring everyone another glass of red wine. There’s a particular scene, framed through a café window, where the entire ethos of the film collapses into a single glance between Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo. No words. Just a spark of recognition: something radical is being born.

That spark was felt acutely in Cannes. The applause wasn’t just for the craft—it was for the sheer joy of seeing cinema engage with its own history without falling into didacticism. Linklater’s film walks a tightrope between reverence and playfulness. He gleefully deflates the idea of Godard as some monolithic genius while simultaneously affirming his daring. “This isn’t about making Breathless again,” Richard Linklater said in the production notes. “It’s about living inside the moment when it all began—when no one had yet defined the rules.”

Quentin Tarantino, a lifelong champion of film history, clearly resonated with this approach. His embrace of Linklater before the screening became an impromptu photo op, but more than that, it felt like a symbolic passing of the cinephile torch—two American directors obsessed with French cinema, united in celebration. And beyond the glamour of Cannes, Nouvelle Vague is already creating a stir in the international market. Goodfellas, the Paris-based sales agent, is fielding strong interest from buyers eager to bring this vibrant cinematic essay to audiences worldwide ahead of its theatrical release in France on October 8, 2025.

As Cannes 2025 moves forward with its usual mix of brooding dramas and political allegories, Nouvelle Vague feels like a shot of espresso—lively, intelligent, and invigorating. It’s a film that reminds us why we fell in love with movies in the first place: not because they explain the world, but because they dare to capture its chaos, its humor, and its beauty. In the final scene, Jean-Luc Godard, alone in a darkened cinema, watches his own reflection flicker across his sunglasses as his debut finally plays on the screen. It’s a moment that lands like a revelation. And as the lights went up in the Palais, there was no question: Richard Linklater had done something special. Not by imitating Godard, but by channeling the same restless spirit that made the New Wave possible in the first place.

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Synopsis : 
This is the story of Godard shooting Breathless” told in the style and spirit of Godard shooting Breathless.

Nouvelle Vague
Directed by Richard Linklater
Written by Holly Gent, Vincent Palmo Jr., Michèle Pétin, Laetitia Masson
Produced by Laurent Pétin, Michèle Pétin, John Sloss, Richard Linklater, Mike Blizzard
Starring  Zoey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin
Cinematography : David Chambille
Edited by Catherine Schwartz
Production companies : ARP Productions, Detour Filmproduction
Distributed by ARP Sélection (France)
Release date : 17 May 2025 (Cannes), October 8, 2025 (France)
Running time : 105 minutes

Photos : @fannyrlphotography