Torn from a reviewer’s notepad: Walking out of Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, we couldn’t get a certain crazy retro-pop ditty out of our heads. In Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough’s 1966 song “I’m Hip,” unforgettably covered by cocktail-lounge chantoozie Blossom Dearie, the singer mock-complains about the latest, coolest thing from Paris: “Every Saturday night/With my suit buttoned tight and my suedes on/I’m gettin’ my kicks/Watchin’ arty French flicks with my shades on.”

They were talking about Jean-Luc Godard, of course.

Nouvelle Vague is filmmaker Richard Linklater’s dramatized, somewhat fictionalized tribute to director Godard’s outrageously influential film, À bout de souffle. That 1960 release, translated as Breathless in English-language markets, inspired a worldwide vogue for

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