Nouvelle Vague · reception & legacy

2025 · Richard Linklater

How Nouvelle Vague has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Premiered in competition at Cannes 2025 to one of the festival's warmest receptions — then landed at Netflix, and cinephiles savoured the irony of a handmade tribute to celluloid-era Godard debuting on the streamer.

What's debated

The fight it starts: is this a joyous hangout movie about the birth of cool, or affectionate cosplay — a Godard recreation that Godard himself would have loathed?

Its footprint

Guillaume Marbeck's dead-ringer Godard — sunglasses, cigarette, aphorisms — became instantly screenshot-able, and the film sent a wave of viewers back to (or to) Breathless for the first time.

Where it stands

Pure Letterboxd catnip — a black-and-white, Academy-ratio movie about making a movie, adopted on arrival as cinephile comfort food.

★ Did you know? Linklater shot the film almost entirely in French — a language he doesn't fluently speak — casting largely unknown French actors chosen for their uncanny resemblance to dozens of real New Wave figures.

Named by the director

Influences Richard Linklater has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

Breathless (1960) — Linklater set out to recreate the making of Godard's debut and said he tried to shoot in its own freewheeling, on-the-street style — same look, same era, same energy.
Jean-Luc Godard — Linklater has repeatedly cited Godard as a formative influence and framed the film as a portrait of the moment his hero invented himself.