Review

The French New Wave Is Still New

Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” shows how we’re still catching our breath from “Breathless.” November 21, 2025, 2:00 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

A black and white film still of people walking in the street in Paris in the 1960s.

During a particularly ebullient moment in Richard Linklater’s latest film, Nouvelle Vague , currently streaming on Netflix, a passerby sees two actors preparing in front of a camera on a Parisian street and asks what’s being shot. “A documentary,” Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard barks back, “about Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg acting out a fiction.”

Nouvelle Vague , which recreates the development and production of Godard’s groundbreaking feature film Breathless , knows very well that

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