Richard Linklater’s The New Wave: A Sophisticated Marvel or an Embarrassing Film? Le Masque’s take on this homage to Godard

New wave is a Texas film dedicated to the first feature film of the French-Swiss director, namely: I was suffocating Jean-Luc Godard. Commemoration is not the right term, rather it is a matter of reviving the spirit and impulse that led to the creation ofI was suffocating in Paris in 1959. For this, Richard Linklater takes a rather dangerous side of black-and-white reconstruction with young actors still unknown, including Guillaume Marbec, who gets his first film role, playing no less than Jean-Luc Godard.

Truffaut, Chabrol, Belmondo, Jean Seberg, all present. But also figures less known to the general public, such as Pierre Rissien, Godard’s assistant, or Raoul Coutard, a cameraman known to moviegoers. Therefore, this is the story of a group of young people who are revolutionizing the world with images with impudence and humor. Because “The main thing is to have fun”as Belmondo said.

Muriel Judet: “A discreet meditation on the energy of the first film”

For film critics, the film goes beyond a simple biopic to become a deep reflection on cinematic creativity and collective imitation: “The movie is very upsetting, I watched it twice because I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Looking at the film, there may be a misunderstanding, you can say to yourself: this is a biopic that politely reconstructs this era and that for each personality presented finds the actor that most matches physically. But you really have to go deep and not stay on the surface, because Linklater is someone who makes cinema that’s theoretical, but it’s almost understated and, above all, not scary at all.” For Muriel Joudet, this is a film that reflects on what a biopic is, which is almost a meditation on the format, and also on “what a first film is, what energy it gives off, what Jean-Luc Godard is”: “He’s not here to build statues, he’s not here to pray to Godard, he’s here to say: the first film, and above all, Breathless. And, above all, what he does with these young French actors. I have to say, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen French actors act this well, and I had to wait for a Texas director who doesn’t understand a word of French to see that precision.”

Pierre Murat: “Impossible Membership When Everything Remains Desperately False”

For a journalist, the imitation of cult characters does not create the magic of cinema at all, leaving the viewer in front of simple, confused doppelgangers: “I remained indifferent. It was for me from the first seconds. And suddenly I saw François Truffaut appear, and then I said to myself: no, it’s impossible, I can’t accept it, even if it’s not the actor’s fault. And then, worst of all, it was an actor, also a very good one – it’s not against him that I have it – but who is responsible for the role of Jean-Paul. Belmondo. It’s terrible for me, the worst for me is Jean Seberg, and I see an actress who is very good and who is trying to look like Jean Seberg, and all this I say to myself: it’s like in a museum where you go to see a Van Gogh exhibition. oh no, you will not see Van Goghs, but fake Van Goghs.’

Jean-Marc Lalanne: “The graceful miracle that brings wax mannequins to life”

For a journalist, the film achieves the feat of transferring its characters from frozen portraits to embodied life with irresistible frankness: “For me, the film is a miracle. Indeed, each character is presented as a frozen portrait, facing the camera, with a name written on it. And suddenly he falls into fiction, and every time the film manages to instill a spark of life and revive a character from a museum, bring a wax mannequin back to life, because suddenly he is filmed in his youth, in something extremely embodied, alive. There really is a kind of miracle of embodiment in the film, which I find incredible.“For Jean-Marc Lalanne, this is such a fascinating film about making:”Linklater shows that there is actually a very fine line between a masterpiece and a failure. It made me think of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. Godard is shown to bear a slight resemblance to Ed Wood, the turnip specialist of the 1950s. The way he captures a very young Godard making a film that turns out to be revolutionary, but which could just as easily have been a disaster. This vulnerability of creation is shown extremely well.“

Florence Colombani: “A playful fetish that misses the point: a great montage”

According to critics, despite the impressive reconstruction, the film failed to depict the real revolutionI was suffocating ignoring editing: “We’re not in a museum, but we’re in a fetish, and I don’t think it’s fair to deny the film its fetishism, which involves finding understudy actors. For me, it’s Jean-Paul Belmondo, who I’m totally stuck with because I think the actor who plays him doesn’t have the grace, the swagger, the magnetic presence of Jean-Paul Belmondo in À bout de souffle. There is also fetishism, because there is a desire for reconstruction, including in Paris at that time. There are a lot of scenes, especially on the Champs-Élysées, where there was definitely a lot of post-production to give us the impression that we’re in a Paris that’s completely gone. For me, this is a fetishistic approach par excellence, that is, it seeks to reproduce the atmosphere, images, spirit of the film “Breathless”. But this is a playful and extremely teasing fetish, by no means sacralizing.“Florence Colombani in the film was disturbed by the representation of cinema that the film gives, “through Breathless, taken as an example of a completely revolutionary film, this film that completely changes the grammar of cinema. It seems to me that the miracle of “Breathing” is not in filming, but in editing. But we barely talk about it in Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague. Basically, we see a shoot where basically we come in with no script, we don’t really know what we’re going to shoot, we do three jokes, we move the camera in weird ways and all that, everybody’s laughing, it’s funny. But that’s not what revolutionized Breathless. I felt cheated of the film’s promise of telling me what a miracle Breathless was and what a revolution Jean-Luc Godard was.

Find all Mask reviews here