Nouvelle Vague: A Review - Non 'Mange Tes Mort', Mais Plutot 'N'importe Quoi'*

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A rather fruitless endeavor devoid of insight and drama. I highly recommend you go straight to the source and watch Breathless and the rest of the French New Wave classics instead.

*Apologies to the French if I butchered their language in the headline.

Nouvelle Vague, directed by Richard Linklater, is a new Netflix film that dramatizes the making of the iconic 1960 Jean-Luc Godard film, Breathless, which was one of the first films of the French New Wave.

The Nouvelle Vague, which translated means “New Wave”, was born among a cohort of cinephiles and cinema intellectuals in the offices of the famed French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s – which included Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol as well as filmmakers Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda, Jacque Demy and Chris Marker.

Breathless, which is an existential love story/ crime drama, was a revolutionary film that signaled the emergence of the French New Wave and its unorthodox style – most notably long tracking shots, jump cuts and breaking filmmaking rules like continuity and 180-degree axis of camera movement, upon cinema.

Breathless was enormously popular and is considered by some to be one of the very best films ever made.

I do not think Breathless is one of the greatest films ever made…I don’t think it is even the best French New Wave film ever made – I’d go with Truffault’s The 400 Blows (1959) for that title…followed closely by Truffault’s Jules et Jim (1962) and Alian Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), but I do think Breathless is a fantastic piece of cinema.

Whatever you may think of Godard and the French New Wave – and lots of people don’t think much of it (those people are meat-headed philistines!!), Breathless is a phenomenal film that radiates with an undeniable cinematic magnetism and momentum.

Watching the film and its’ avant-garde cinematic styling, as well as its compelling and charming performances from Jean-Paul Belmondo and the luminous Jean Seberg, is a pure joy.

Unfortunately, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, which is an ode to, and dramatization of, Breathless, is not much of a joy. In fact, it is quite a baffling and confounding experience that never seems to make much sense or coalesce into a coherent piece of cinema.

Linklater, who is occasionally a bit of a cinema revolutionary himself – as evidenced by his unorthodox films Waking Life and Boyhood, obviously adores the French New Wave in general and Breathless/Godard in particular. But his film about the making of Breathless is the polar opposite of Breathless itself, as it seems to serve no purpose and is devoid of the magnetism, momentum and energy that make Breathless the iconic film that it is.

Nouvelle Vague recounts the daily struggle to get Breathless made and the original, dare I say “odd”, way it was made. It highlights how Godard was a difficult artist who refused to compromise his vision, and kept most everyone in the dark about what that vision actually was.

As a cinephile and a lover of the French New Wave (and also a lover of the Italian Neo-Realists who were the precursors to the Nouvelle Vague), I understand the appeal of examining it, I just don’t think trying to re-enact the making of an iconic movie is the best way to do that.

Yes, there are some fun little moments in Nouvelle Vague, and it is momentarily enjoyable to go “oh hey!! There’s Truffaut…or Roberto Rossellini or Chabrol!!” But ultimately, Nouvelle Vague feels like an empty gesture, a recreation of a great moment in history that is stripped of all its drama, mystery and thrills….sort of like the recreation of a famous battle – it lacks drama because the bullets aren’t real…and thus the stakes are null and void. In other words, it is all play acting - making insight, not to mention genuine drama, impossible.

As dramatic as the making of Breathless was at the time, there is no drama in revisiting it as we know that ultimately the film gets made, is a masterpiece and Godard is venerated as a genius and proven right. So, when obstacles appear in Nouvelle Vague regarding the making of Breathless…they are nothing but toothless drama.

The cast of the film do decent enough jobs mimicking their famous characters. For example, Guillaume Marbeck seems exactly like what you’d think what Jean-Luc Godard was like. But the performance, as enjoyable as it was, feels a bit empty…like something you’d see at a Paris amusement park dedicated to French filmmakers.

Zoey Deutch plays Jean Seberg – who was quite a fascinating character in real-life (and who died at a very young age – and under very mysterious circumstances -  which included “meddling” from the U.S. intelligence community), is not so fascinating in Nouvelle Vague. Deutch is certainly a beauty like Seberg, but she lacks the charisma and charm of her iconic character.

The overwhelming feeling after watching Nouvelle Vague was simply – why would I watch this instead of watching Breathless itself? The answer, of course, is that you shouldn’t.

Breathless is streaming on HBO Max – or Max or whatever the hell HBO is calling their streaming service nowadays. Instead of watching Nouvelle Vague on Netflix, go watch Breathless on HBO Max, and then watch The 400 Blows, and Jules et Jim (both are also on Max), and Hiroshima, Mon Amour.

If you want to do a deep dive on the French New Wave _ which I highly recommend…The Criterion Channel streaming service (which is excellent) has a great collection (which include all three of the above films, and they also have a great collection of Italian Neo-Realist films too which I highly recommend (Bicycle Thieves, Rome: Open City and Germany: Year Zero are a great place to start).

The bottom line is that as much as Richard Linklater may genuinely love the French New Wave, Breathless and Godard, he does it no favors with his rather tepid and trite Nouvelle Vague – which is hamstrung by a paucity of interest and insight.

So, if you are interested in the slightest in the French New Wave, Breathless and/or Godard (you should be!), skip Nouvelle Vague and go to the original source…you’ll be very glad you did.

©2025

Hit Man: A Review - Missing the Target...but Not by Too Much.

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. A harmless bit of entertainment that is enjoyable if you go in with low expectations.

Hit Man, starring Glen Powell and directed by Richard Linklater, is a noir rom-com loosely based on the true story of Gary Johnson, a psychology and philosophy professor who worked undercover for the New Orleans police department posing as a “hit man for hire”.

The film, written by both Linklater and Powell, follows the travails of the nerdy Gary as he finds his true self by embodying the various hit man-characters he concocts in order to dupe customers and thwart murders before they happen.

Hit Man was released on Netflix on June 7th, 2024, which is how I watched it.  

I have heard Richard Linklater called the cinematic voice of Generation X, which I find to be an odd choice for a variety of reasons, the least of which is that he is just a bit too old to qualify for Generation X. As a Gen X-er myself, I have found Linklater to be, for the most part, a forgettable filmmaker. I find the vast majority of his work to be, at best…just fine. In general, I find nothing remarkable about his work at all. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t love it, and the truth is I never think about it.

The film that put Linklater (and Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck) on the map was Dazed and Confused (1993). I never understood the love for that movie despite having recognized my life being portrayed in it. It wasn’t a bad movie, but it also wasn’t a very good one.

I felt the same about Before Sunrise (1995), which made Ethan Hawke a movie star. Once again, I recognized myself and my generation in that movie, I just didn’t think it was particularly noteworthy or compelling cinema.

In 2014, Linklater was a favorite to win an Oscar with his coming-of-age film Boyhood, which was famously shot over a ten-year span. Critics adored the ten-year-shoot gimmick, but I found the whole enterprise to be gratingly vapid, pretentious and second-rate.

The Linklater films I have liked a lot are Waking Life (2001), an esoteric cinematic exploration of the meaning of life, and the mainstream School of Rock (2003). Waking Life was a ballsy movie to make because it was unapologetically arthouse while School of Rock was unabashedly crowd-pleasing.

Which brings us to Hit Man. Hit Man is a mainstream movie but not quite as mainstream as School of Rock…but it also has a subtle strain of the arthouse weaving through it.

The film flies as high as its star, Glen Powell, will take it…which is high but not that high. Powell, who is definitely the current “it” guy in Hollywood, and is poised to have a big Summer with his new Twister movie coming out in July, is charming and relentlessly likeable, but there is no denying that he’s a sort of a C or D level McConaughey – which isn’t exactly a compliment.

Powell’s various hit man characters are good for a few laughs in a showy “look at me” acting type of way, most notably his impression of Christian Bale from American Psycho, which is pretty great. But Powell, for as conventionally handsome as he is, is just a nice, good-looking guy…and that’s about it. He’s likeable, but he’s not very interesting. That doesn’t mean he won’t be a big movie star, it just means that he won’t be a very interesting movie star.

Powell’s co-star, Adria Arjona, who plays Gary’s love interest Madison, is certainly easy on the eyes, and she does a decent enough job in the role. But Arjona, like Powell, feels like a C or D level talent…which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it also isn’t the best.

One can’t help but think while watching Hit Man that thirty years ago a movie like this would’ve starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts and been a massive hit…but in today’s world, it stars Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, and is streaming on Netflix and, frankly, will be forgotten almost as soon as the credits roll.

And that is the problem…Hit Man isn’t a bad movie, but it also isn’t great. It is an adequately-made, amusing-enough piece of middle-brow entertainment with some dark twists thrown in to give it some artistic credence.

The film tries to be sexy, but just isn’t steamy enough to make the grade. It tries to be funny, but never consistently hits the comedy mark. It tries to be dark and daring but doesn’t have quite cajones to be fully either.

This isn’t to say the film is bad…it really and truly isn’t. It certainly has its charms and it is entertaining enough, and to its credit it does have something to say and says it in a rather clever and covert way. It is well-constructed and professionally crafted, but ultimately this is a movie that comes and goes and that is the end of that…which is emblematic of the state of cinema and the movie business.

Unfortunately, Hit Man is, like so much of cinema today, fine but forgettable. That many critics are fawning all over it speaks less to the quality of the film than the overall diminishment in the quality of cinema (and film criticism) as a whole in recent years.

To circle back to the notion of Linklater as the cinematic voice of Generation X, I would point readers in the direction of a film that came out last year, also about a hit man, also on Netflix, titled The Killer. The Killer is darker, smarter, funnier, more masterfully made and substantially better movie than Hit Man. The Killer’s director is David Fincher, who is of the same generation as Linklater and is infinitely a better filmmaker…as are a plethora of filmmakers from a similar era, which is why Linklater being the labelled the Gen X guy is so absurd.

Regardless of Linklater’s filmmaking status, the question is…is Hit Man worth watching? My answer would be…sure…why not? It seems like a good date movie as it’s a rather harmless, safe, middle of the road movie that breezes by and never moves you one way or the other over its brisk 115-minute run time.  

So, if you do watch Hit Man, my recommendation is to go in with low-expectations…you won’t be overwhelmed, but you won’t be disappointed either.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024