The New Wave, Richard Linklater: The Myth of Youth

New wavethe latest Richard Linklater film currently showing don’t fool people with that title. This is really a question Godar, Seberg, Belmondo…and the whole gang, tracing the genesis of a small revolution in cinema: filmingI was suffocating. pour Arian Nicholasthe cinematographer managed to offer a playful and rhythmic production that evokes notes of Godard without falling into pastiche.

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“Ah, youth! Big deal Richard Linklater. Director Fr Stunned and confusedfrom the trilogy Earlier (Sunrise, at midnight, Sunset) and Everyone wants some shoots a group of young people again with New wavepresented at the last Cannes Film Festival. And not just any band: the one that turned it around I was suffocatingfirst feature film Jean-Luc Godard (embodied here by a wonderful Guillaume Marbec). In 1959, Godard was only 28 years old, but he already felt old: “too late”he laments in front of the squad of Fr Movie notebooks. SES acolytes Truffaut, Romer or Chabrol have already released their first works. He, more demanding and stubborn, is waiting for his moment. Gauguinwhich he quotes said: “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.” Godard finds a producer, takes an idea from him New detective and finally makes his revolution. Twenty days of filming Jean Seberg et Jean-Paul Belmondothere is no script or direct sound recording, the actors are confused by the director who speaks aphorisms and who does what he wants. Improvisation, the only method for “grab reality at random”? Godard, who films the fleeing thief, is a little trickster himself. If he claims to be looking “spontaneity” et “unexpected”his film rushes in the opposite direction: the dialogue seems artificial, the sound is added in post-production, the editing is choppy. He wants to embody the new present, but above all he longs “immortality”… These paradoxes are evidenced by the chosen title: his character is young, even spirit! “Let’s prove that genius is not a gift, but a solution that we invent in hopeless cases”said Sartre – also cited in New waveyouth appears as it is: a myth created in real time. All young people invent and unfold themselves according to the myth that they intend (more or less consciously) to become. Like any myth, Linklater shows, youth is a lie. But lies tell the truth. »

New waveRichard Linklater, Guillaume Marbec, Zoe Deutsch and Aubrey Dallin. In theaters.