Dir: Richard Linklater, France/US, 2025, 106 mins, French with subtitles
Cast: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin
Review by Carol Allen
But why am I surprised? His work is always original and interesting and this one, about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature film Au bout due Souffle (Breathless) in 1960 is a total delight.
The New Wave was made up of a group of young film critics in Paris, who first drew attention for their film review magazine Les Cahiers du Cinema but who wanted to direct films themselves. By 1960 several of Godard’s colleagues, including Francois Truffaut, Claude Charbrol, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda had already made their celluloid debuts – in fact in the early scenes of Linklater’s film Truffaut had just made it big at the Cannes Film Festival with his first movie The 400 Blows – and Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) frankly looks a bit sick about it. But his old chum Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) then writes a story outline for him and Godard is off.
He manages to recruit then unknown actor Jean Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) to play the leading role of the young gangster on the run and to persuade up and coming American actress Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) to play his American girlfriend. He doesn’t have a script as such. Just scribbles a few notes over breakfast and he then gets the actors to improvise. He’s going to dub their dialogue anyway. It’s a method which drives the continuity girl nuts at his lack of respect for the rules – “you’re crossing the line” she warns him – Godard invented the jump cut and he rarely does a retake. Spontaneity is all. And even though he’s only got 14 days filming, half the time he knocks off at lunchtime, much to the distress of his producer Claude Beausol (Benoît Bouthors).
Short in crisp black and white and largely in French with a bit of English from Seberg, Linklater has captured perfectly the visual style of Breathless and the feeling of Paris in the 50s as the ultimate in cool. As Godard, Marbeck, in black leather jacket and never without a cigarette in his mouth and the trademark sunglasses hiding his eyes, is that cool personified. Bit of a poseur actually but you can’t help liking him. Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg is terrific. Watchful and wary at first in the face of Godard’s apparent unprofessionalism but also once persuaded, well along for the ride. She gives a most engaging performance. While Aubry Dullin is a very laid back Belmondo, who thinks he may well never work again after this obviously bizarre film but what the hell, he gets to hang out with a pretty girl. There’s also a fun performance from Matthieu Penchinat as Godard’s easy going cinematographer Raoul, who takes his director’s often seemingly bizarre instructions totally in his stride.
This film is not just a simple homage to a director who made film history but a movie in its own right – and often hoot out loud funny. As a bonus you get an introduction, sometimes a very brief one, to pretty much all of the then up and coming directors of the Nouvelle Vague, with their names in helpful captions when they are introduced in single shots – rather like police mug shots in a way. Well, after all, they were movie revolutionaries.
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