In 1959, a film critic took a camera, threw the rules book and forged a new type of cinema in the streets of Paris. Three decades later, a young slacker succeeded in a similar feat in Austin. And on Saturday, an American Master World created a moving and richly entertaining tribute to the frantic creativity which propelled itself and its spiritual mentor in Cannes.
A work of love and a product of a considerable craft, “new wave” by Richard Linklater – which recounts the manufacture of “Breathlesshless” by Jean -Luc Godard – is more than a simple Valentine’s Day for the new French wave; The film is also a stealth showcase for a filmmaker rarely announced (or elsewhere, tribe) for its technical sophistication. Indeed, without ever attracting too much attention to its more than 300 VFX -Shots, Linklater’s latest pieces as a Hange film of a past world – a hike through Paris of the 1950s which inaugurated viewers in the nearest cafe, inviting them to take a seat.
If not, how could the manufacturer of “Dazed and Confused” otherwise proceed?
Although working in French and pulling in a black and white appearance report adapted to a period, Linklater has lost little of his own creative voice in translation. In addition, he clearly sees a little of himself – if he is a little more caustic, and with a more pronounced Swiss Lisp – in the young Jean -Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck, a professional photographer making his debut in the exceptional film).
The filmmaker supervises his subject as an atatar for all the parasites with more Moxie than means, without ever following the old-a-man framework. If anything, the critic Cahiers du Cinéma which enters the film is Already Completely defined and a legend in his own mind. The trick is to bring everyone to be careful.
Godard’s Social Circle extends far away, welcoming in the best François Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), the film buff become-director who has become an accountor of the cane-cinema, the Cannes film Festival, Pierre Risselini Consignuer (Benjamin Clery), and the spiritual mentor of Godard, Roberto Rosselini (Laurent Mother).
Its network includes the countless comrades of life to the movies who have formed the Cahiers du Cinéma Masthead, those who have names like Chabrol, Rivette, Rohmer and Varda – and although I will not use more revision space listing the denizens of this half (nor of each actor corresponding to their own title), rest the title of crowd.
And when the film resumes, almost all of them have already made the jump in the cinema – all except one. And so, with fire and driving and an endless tobacco reserve, Godard (even to this emerging junction, nobody dares to call him Jean-Luc) brings together the most cottine budgets to finance the most threads and he shoots in the streets with a girl, Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) and an armed man, Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dallin).
Unlike the previous contributions of linklater to the hange cannon, here, unstructured days are often filled with tension. The American star Seberg cannot understand the improvisation methods of his new director, while the producer of the film bristles a production calendar which draws a little more than an hour per day – and a few days, not at all. Godard, you see, is a cold fanatic, and it is just as happy to smoke, to drink, to sit, to walk and to play the occasional pinball game that it is waiting for the unexpected to reveal. Or as he says to Seberg when asked a little more structure: “I know. I understand. And I don’t care.”
This skepticism between the director and his crew serves the central dramatic arc, although “novelle vague” never becomes too tense. Even if you do not know how the “breath” is revealed, the very existence of a prestige biopic made 60 years later and the first in Cannes should offer very good clues. Instead, the film has the equality of pleasure in linger, looking at sparks flying between the Seberg and Belmondo while their director surely finds his place. “If they never let you go, you will make an excellent handful of carts,” quips the DP.
The actors Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin all have strange resemblances to their emblematic characters, but more importantly, all share an attractive spontaneity, the riffing and the teasing and each other – filming this technically rigorous production with aerity of the capture of life similar to that of a film 66 years ago. The light but charming film of Linklater will never occupy a perch as high as the classic he recreates, but the director knows. He has already designed a more suitable tribute when he took a camera, threw the rules book and forged his own cinema about 35 years ago. Now he wants to spread love.
