Nouvelle Vague Review: Richard Linklater’s ‘Breathless’ Ode Mostly Works

I went into Nouvelle Vague expecting a curio and walked out with a time machine that mostly works. Richard Linklater is not trying to rewrite film history so much as to sit inside it, and this companion piece to Blue Moon plays like another small scale experiment from a filmmaker who keeps testing the limits of his own curiosity. Where Blue Moon felt like a one room exercise with Ethan Hawke talking through a night, Nouvelle Vague wants to teleport you to 1959 France and let the mess of creation wash over you.

The subject is Jean-Luc Godard on the cusp of Breathless. Guillaume Marbeck plays Godard as quick, sly, and slightly inscrutable, a critic turned director who trusts catching the moment more than scripting it to death. Linklater stages production as a tug of war between instinct and infrastructure, and he lets scenes breathe long enough to feel the drift of real time. It is a portrait of process more than a thesis about greatness, which is refreshing, though it can also leave the drama a little diffuse.

Zoey Deutch is the film’s spark as Jean Seberg. Linklater has always understood her buoyant, freewheeling energy, going back to Everybody Wants Some!!, and she brings that charge to set days that keep getting canceled or rerouted on a whim. Deutch plays a professional who wants direction and keeps getting improvisation. The more Godard refuses to commit to a plan, the more Seberg has to decide if she is signing on to chaos or calling the bluff. Their push and pull gives the movie its spine.

The production scenes are where Nouvelle Vague is strongest. You see the stress on crew faces when pages vanish, you hear the awkward silence when a director arrives without a shot list, and you feel the pull of Paris outside the frame. Linklater and his team recreate the late fifties with a tactile warmth, not a museum polish. Cafés feel cramped, cutting rooms feel cramped, and the streets feel like the only place where ideas can breathe. It is immersive without being precious.

There is also a strain of self-interrogation running under the period pleasures. Do we need a reenactment of the birth of a movement that already has landmark films to speak for it, or is there value in a filmmaker like Linklater walking us through how a style can coalesce out of accidents. The film lands somewhere between, closer in spirit to the process play of David Fincher’s Mank than to a definitive biography. It is an ode to trial and error, and to the way a director’s temperament becomes the weather on a set.

Not every scene lands. A few stretches feel like box checking on the road to Breathless, and the friction can sometimes read as reenactment rather than lived conflict. The movie’s commitment to capturing indecision comes at a cost to momentum, especially for viewers not already invested in Godard’s mythology. Even so, the cumulative effect is winning. Marbeck keeps Godard opaque without turning him into a puzzle, and Deutch gives Seberg a grounded wit that clears the air whenever the film gets too misty about the New Wave.

READ MORE MOVIE REVIEWS: The Legend of Ochi, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Nouvelle Vague may not feel strictly necessary, yet it is frequently absorbing and occasionally electric. It is a reminder that Linklater keeps making movies because he likes to look closely, whether the subject is a barroom confession or the jittery birth of a classic. This one will not inspire a movement, and it does not try to, but it earns its place as a smart, modest riff on a seismic moment. By the time Breathless finally clicks into focus, you understand why the chaos mattered and why the gamble was worth it, even if the film around it plays as a minor, affectionate gloss.

Score: 7/10

Nouvelle Vague (2025)

• Cast: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin, Alix Bénézech, Paolo Luka Noé, Tom Novembre
• Director: Richard Linklater
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
• Runtime: 106 minutes
• Rated: R
• Release Date: November 14, 2025
• Movies Like Nouvelle Vague: Saturday Night, Air, A Complete Unknown, More Movies Like Nouvelle Vague
• Follow us on Letterboxd