Keswick Film Club - Nouvelle Vague

Synopsis

Fancy a comedy trip into film history? It is 1959 and Jean-Luc Godard is angry because all his buddies from the magazine 'Cahiers du Cinéma' they work for seem to have given up criticising films in favour of making them. "The best way to criticize a film is to make one" he quips to a friend. So, he turns round, bullies a producer Georges de Beauregard into backing a low-budget movie, hires a few unknowns and sets out to make the film that will change film history forever - 'A Bout de Souffle (Breathless)'.

The French New Wave has hit the world. Step forward to 2025 and another adventurous film-maker, Richard Linklater (it took him ten years to make 'Boyhood', allowing his cast to age) decides he wants to make an homage to Godard. How best to do this? Why not make a film about the making of 'Breathless' in the same, playful, Godard-like way - including Black & White photography and in the French language. "Linklater doesn't mimic Godard here, though he gives us a good idea of what the director - played by newcomer Guillaume Marbeck, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the man himself - could have been like to work with. In a nutshell, Godard was impossible, refusing to write a real script, calling it a day on set when he ran out of ideas, disrespecting laws of filmic continuity and getting into a fistfight at one point with his exasperated producer, George de Beauregard...If wannabe directors take anything away from 'Nouvelle Vague', it's that Godard had an idea of where he wanted to go but never knew how he would get there. His very openness to possibility is what made his movies so original" - Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter.

Ever wondered what Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jean-Paul Belmondo or Jean Seberg were really like? Come along to 'Nouvelle Vague' and see for yourself.