Movie Reviews
‘Nouvelle Vague’ Review: Richard Linklater’s Movie About the Making of Godard’s ‘Breathless’ Is an Enchanting Ode to the Rapture of Cinema
In “Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater’s ingenious and enchanting docudrama about the making of “Breathless,” the 29-year-old Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) never takes off his sunglasses. He wears them on the set and in the office, in restaurants and at the movies. (The film doesn’t have a bedroom scene, but if it did he might wear them there too.)
The omnipresent round dark shades serve several functions. First and foremost, they’re authentic — Godard, in the late ’50s and early ’60s, really did wear his sunglasses all the time, almost as a form of branding. They were instrumental in lending him his mystique: that of an intellectual artist who was cool, who knew how to keep his distance, who had things on his mind he was too hip to share. Yet the sunglasses also accomplish something else. In a biopic, no actor looks exactly like the person they’re playing. But the unknown French actor Guillaume Marbeck, with a bushy widow’s peak and a chiseled poker face, looks astoundingly like Godard, and without the eyes to give him away the resemblance is all but perfect. I was also amazed at how much Marbeck nails Godard’s voice — pensive and nasal in a musical way, with a hint of a reedy tremor in it.
Watching “Nouvelle Vague,” we don’t have to squint a bit to pretend that this is Jean-Luc Godard. It seems, rather, that Godard has sprung to life before us. And that uncanny quality extends to the entire movie, which plunks us down in Paris in 1959, in many of the same streets and boulevards and cafés and hotel rooms where “Breathless” was shot. The movie is in French with subtitles, and it uses lustrous high-contrast black-and-white cinematography (by David Chambille) to mirror the look of “Breathless,” and to make us feel like we’re right there, mingling with Godard and Truffaut and Chabrol and Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg and Jean-Pierre Melville, as if we’d dropped in by time machine.
The first half hour of “Nouvelle Vague” introduces us to Godard and his colleagues on the French new wave scene, and it shows him maneuvering to direct his first movie, a privilege he thinks is long overdue, since he and his fellow critics at Cahiers du Cinéma have all vowed to become filmmakers. The owlish Chabrol has already made two features, and the debonair Truffaut has finished “The 400 Blows”; Godard, a thief when he needs to be, lifts money out of the Cahiers till to go to the Cannes Film Festival for “The 400 Blows” premiere. The film is received ecstatically, as everyone realizes they’re seeing the next generation of French cinema.
Now it’s Godard’s turn, if he can strike a deal with the producer Georges de Beauregard (Bruno Freyfürst). Godard does so by agreeing to make a gangster-and-a-girl movie based on a treatment by Truffaut, and by saying he’ll shoot it in 20 days. He recruits his young movie-actor acquaintance, the twisty-lipped hunk Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), to play a small-time hoodlum antihero, and he approaches Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch), an American movie star coming off the unhappy experience of working with Otto Preminger in “Bonjour Tristesse,” to play the American girl who gets involved with him. As far as the crew goes, it’s pretty simple: He recruits the tall and personable Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) to be his cameraman, since Coutard shot documentary footage of the French Indochina War and Godard wants “Breathless” to look and feel like a documentary.
Godard has chosen to make “Breathless” in a particular way, and part of his slyness is that he’s going to do it without saying it out loud. Yes, the movie has locations and costumes, and yes, there’s a “script.” But Godard is seized by an insurrectionary idea: He’s basically going to make up “Breathless” as he goes along.
Once “Nouvelle Vague” arrives at the shooting of “Breathless,” the rest of the film is devoted to what happened during the shoot. And the reason this is elating to watch — in the way that a movie about the making of almost any other movie might not be — is that there’s barely any separation between the film Godard is making and what’s happening off camera.
“Nouvelle Vague” isn’t a comedy, yet there’s a deadpan comic dimension to it, and it has to do with what an insanely minimal process the making of “Breathless” was, and what it actually took for Godard to get away with that. On the first day of shooting, the first time he says “Action,” we think something is missing, because all we see is a casual handful of people standing on the street, with a small camera set up opposite a phone booth. There’s no lighting equipment (because the film is going to be made with natural light), and no sound (because it’s all going to be post-synced). I’ve seen students making a short for their college film class that looked like a bigger production than this.
Godard’s method is all about the inspiration of the moment, which means that he’ll do something like shoot for two hours and then take the rest of the day off. Each morning, at the Dupont Montparnasse, he scribbles down some version of what the actors are going to say that day, and feeds them the lines as they go along. It may sound like he’s inventing low-budget independent film. But here’s the reason he’s not.
In 1957, two years before Godard made “Breathless” (the movie premiered in January 1960), John Cassavetes shot his own first film, “Shadows,” which essentially did invent independent filmmaking as we know it. He did some of the same things Godard did. But “Shadows” was a work that broke completely with Hollywood. The glory of “Breathless” is that it’s a loose, semi-improvisatory extended bebop jazz solo of a movie, but it’s also rooted in the metaphysics of Hollywood: in movie stardom, in the tropes of gangsters and femme fatales, in the majesty of Bogart. Godard, in his genius literary screw-loose way, was making the stripped-to-the-sidewalls version of an old-fashioned movie, and that’s why the shooting of “Breathless” was, among other things, a fantastic balancing act.
He had to feed the ego of his stars, he had to convince Seberg — just about every day — that what she doing was not career suicide, and he had to convince his producer that what he was making was a real movie. Part of the charm of Godard in “Nouvelle Vague” is seeing what an ace schmoozer he is. He’ll do whatever it takes: jump rope with Belmondo, do a walking handstand. But his calling card is that he always needs to be the smartest person in the room, and he does it with such caustic wit that he has a way of leaving everyone around him in a pleasurable daze. (They don’t know what hit them.)
He keeps having encounters with famous older directors, and that’s the one place where he’s deferential, because he seems to be friends with all of them: Roberto Rossellini (Laurent Mothe), who comes to the Cahiers du Cinema offices; Jean-Pierre Melville (Tom Novembre), who Godard recruits for a cameo in “Breathless”; or Robert Bresson (Aurélien Lorgnier), who he runs into when Bresson is shooting “Pickpocket” in the subway. These filmmakers give him tips, sharing their secrets, but what connects the advice is that they’re really inviting Godard into their private club of karmic explorers. They understand that the hidden nature of filmmaking is that it’s too big, too unwieldy, too unpredictable for a director to fully control the process. All he can do is guide it.
I think it’s that perception that makes “Nouvelle Vague” such a personal film for Linklater, and his most exquisite achievement since “Boyhood.” It’s clear how deeply he identifies with Jean-Luc Godard, who comes off here as a puckish and sly dictator. He speaks in epigrams (“You should never adapt a book to the cinema, you should adapt the cinema to a book,” “A filmmaker is either a plagiarist or a revolutionary”), and he does perverse things like insist that a cup stay in the shot even if it breaks continuity. At times, he and Coutard seem to be creating the very first motion picture — mounting the camera on a car for a makeshift tracking shot, or placing it inside a cart that Coutard crams himself into, so that it’s invisible and they can use the Paris pedestrians as unpaid extras. The ingenuity of “Breathless” was miraculous, and Linklater mirrors that ingenuity in the spontaneous bravura with which he re-creates it.
But “Nouvelle Vague” also has a great theme. There’s a driving concept behind Godard’s technique, and in many ways he’s open about it: toss off the dialogue, never do more than one or two takes, shoot when you feel like it and not just to meet the schedule, find the visual poetry in real locations. But what he’s keeping inside that wry egghead of his is the secret that will hold all of this together — that if it works, he’s going to capture the lightning of reality in a bottle, and that will revolutionize what cinema can be. Even the jump-cut that came to define “Breathless” happens for a logistical reason. They have far too much footage, so Godard tells his editors: Don’t cut any scenes — just cut each scene down to its highlights. (Spoken by someone who’s either a postmodern cinema visionary or an early case of ADHD, or both.)
Just about all the actors in “Nouvelle Vague” are lusciously right for their roles. Aubry Dullin makes Belmondo a sweet-souled rogue, and Zoey Deutch’s Seberg is a force. Linklater introduces each character by flashing his or her name on screen (there’s a lot of late-‘50s Paris cinema inside baseball), and though you wish you saw more of some of them (like Agnès Varda), it’s a savory pleasure to be able to step into this time machine and luxuriate in the company of people who thought that movies were the only thing that mattered. “Nouvelle Vague” is a Linklater gem, and arriving now it really is the right movie at the right time. In an age when blockbuster overkill is supposed to be saving movies, it reminds you that the real salvation of cinema will always come from those who understand that making a movie should be a magic trick good enough to fool the magician himself into believing it.
Wainheads will be delighted to see his alums in cameos: Kerri Kenney-Silver, Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, and supporting roles for Zickel and Truglio. A large portion of the cast are his homies. But with Deutch, Gutierrez-Riley, Wang, Slattery, Impacciatore, and yes, Hamm, it’s as if they’re being inducted into a new mad family. Wain and Marino are basically catching Pokémon and hoping they can hold onto the roster (by that logic, yes, Paul Rudd is a legendary Pokémon). The film is anchored by Zoey — everything everywhere all this summer with Voicemails From Isabelle to Minions & Monsters — Deutch in the Dorothy Gale role, exuding a high level of perkiness consistent with the character’s can-do, wide-eyed, midwestern charm and heart.
A major standout, Ben Wang finally gets to show off his comedic abilities, portraying a self-assured, quick-witted agent who makes me laugh every time he reveals his sheltered upbringing in snappy whines at every inconvenience. Sabrina Impacciatore, who has proven to be a comedic juggernaut in The Paper, is having so much fun hamming it up as the mob boss-esque wicked witch counterpart, torturing her henchmen and deliciously chewing up the scenery whenever onscreen. I don’t think they use her to the height of her comedic prowess, but she’s a delight nonetheless. John Slattery is the film’s comedic MVP. The way the writers use his over-the-top character for comedy is downright hilarious every time. They use him as either a punchline or a force of nature, and he’s great. This movie is like Mad Men propaganda, and by God, it works. As someone who’s never seen it, Gail allowed me a better appreciation for Slattery and Hamm.
Man, we don’t deserve Jon Hamm. This is the second time I’ve seen him play a silly, fictionalized version of himself this year (the other being the SXSW crowd-pleasing rom-com Wishful Thinking, which Gail distributor Sony Pictures Classics acquired), and he also voice-acted in his comedic Mayor Jerry role in Hoppers. Maybe working with Wain in 2007’s The Ten was the canon event, but I consider his weird little sex scene with Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids his awakening. Since then, I’ve only seen him as unserious, and it’s delightful. Oz-like in appearance, he’s funny and befitting the film’s overall light, joyful nature.
LAST STATEMENT
Ultimately, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a campy, delightful romp that succeeds as both a distinctive Hollywood‑centric riff and a Wizard of Oz reimagining, retaining a loving, twisted, demented charm. It’s a weird description, but it’s so high‑spirited and light‑hearted despite being strangely ultraviolent. It might as well be a live‑action episode of Smiling Friends (RIP), yet it’s everything the theatrical market needs today. Ten years ago, this would’ve been a studio production rather than an indie Sundance acquisition, but thank God it exists for the big screen. More absurdist Gail Daughtrys for cinemas (not streaming), please, because this is the most fun to be had in a theater all summer, if not the year thus far.
Sam Raimi‘s Evil Dead films and TV series are a fine example of creativity within constraints, playfulness, self-awareness and outright slapstick comedy. The Evil Dead series after Raimi is very, very different. Starting with 2013’s Evil Dead by Fede Álvarez, followed by Evil Dead Rise by Lee Cronin, the new series takes itself more seriously and emphasises pure horror, violence and gore. Some have considered this praiseworthy as it avoids being a mere retread of the old films, but the reception has been mixed.
In Sébastien Vanicek’s Evil Dead Burn, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) loses her abusive husband (George Pullar) to a motor accident. When she goes home to stay with his family, the consequences of the work of their dead grandfather researching the Necronomicon and the Deadites manifest in terrible ways. One by one, the family are turned into the Evil Dead.
Horror is a genre that depends on you relating to the protagonists so you care what happens to them. In the case of Evil Dead Burn, Yacoub does a decent job with the character she’s given, but the gonzo horror elements manifest so early in the film that she may as well be collateral damage in the onslaught, especially as the film’s early point of view is that of her brother-in-law (Hunter Doohan).
Fans of gory violence will get their money’s worth here, but there’s not a lot going on besides that. The film is a descent into madness and carnage that is so resolutely unpleasant that, after some of the early kills, it becomes numbing. It’s hard to gather what the tone is supposed to be, with lots of callbacks to the early films’ style by setting up inevitable kills with Chekhov’s weed trimmer, Chekhov’s fork and every other potentially dangerous prop the camera lingers on. The family are all deeply unpleasant at some level and so their deaths register as meaningless. Yes, the film has the obligatory something to say about how our tendency to ignore domestic abuse creates demons that destroy families, but then absolutely panders to bloodlust by absolutely revelling in some of the most extreme violence imaginable between family members (and a pet). To say this is not a film for the sensitive is to understate things considerably. This is a film that absolutely earns its content guidance warnings.
Is there any comedy? Some, but it feels out of place given the absolute brutality inflicted on the cast. While most of the other films were self-aware about setting up a ludicrously grisly end for a villain as a payoff, in Evil Dead Burn,the kills have very little flair. It’s also hard to know what the rules for getting rid of a Deadite are, as some of them are still upright and chatty after losing most of the contents of their skull and some are dispatched by the repeated application of a blunt object to the head. Towards the end, a McGuffin is added to make the kills final, but before that, who knows?
Should you watch Evil Dead Burn,? It certainly gets vocal reactions from audiences in a cinema, and if you’re a gorehound you’ll be in for a ride. If you’re a horror fan, it’s certainly a horror film, but violent instead of scary. If you’re just a fan of cinema who likes good films whether or not they’re horror films, then this will be an alienating watch. In Evil Dead Rise the decay of the family was more than background noise and factored into the circumstances of the individual deaths, but not here. It has slight pretences of being a film with Themes and Ideas, but in the end it just feels like an excuse to serve up limbs being mutilated, skulls being crushed and any number of stabbings, slicings and gougings rendered with psychopathic visual fidelity. If that’s what you’re after, that’s what it’s got.
Movie Reviews
‘Night Nurse’ Review: A Caretaker Explores Her Kink for Elder Abuse in the Year’s Strangest Erotic Thriller
There are any number of erotic thrillers in which rich old men are robbed blind and/or left for dead, but Georgia Bernstein’s admirably bizarre “Night Nurse” might be the first movie of its kind where elder abuse is the source — and possible subject— of its erotic thrills. If there are others, I’m not sure I want to know.
But this woozy debut feature doesn’t rely on its audience being turned on by the relationship between a nubile caretaker and her dementia-addled patient. Their psychosexual bond, meanwhile, hinges on cold-calling vulnerable old people under the guise of a grandchild in financial distress. (“I’m in trouble, nana, send me $10,000 or I’ll be left to rot in jail!” That sort of thing). With its slim wisp of a premise stretched into a Strickland-esque dreamscape that substitutes kink for conflict, the film itself hardly seems convinced by its own wrinkled lust — all desperate kisses and non-touching poses of subservience. More important to Bernstein is what that lust reveals about her characters’ deepest needs, specifically how their need to care and be cared for can be as easily perverted as any other form of desire.
As moody and weightless as the noir-accented score that blows through the movie like a curlicue gust of wind in an old cartoon (credit to musicians Sam Clapp and Steven Jackson), “Night Nurse” lacks the pulse required for its stray feelings to come alive. Still, the film ambiently taps into the latent eroticism of teasing out the distance between how you see yourself and who you really are. Bernstein plays with that distance like a telephone cord wrapped around her fingers, and Eleni — played by the excellent newcomer Cemre Paksoy, powerfully helpless — only frays even more as the receiver is brought near the hook. “Everything I did before today wasn’t me,” the nurse tells co-worker Mona (Eleonore Hendricks) after starting a new job at an Illinois retirement home. “It was somebody else.”
What she did before today remains unexplored (specifically, what she did to get herself fired from her last gig), but I’m guessing she’s probably changed less than she thought. There’s a faraway flicker in her eyes the moment she catches the vibe between Mona and Douglas (a ribald and elusive Bruce McKenzie), a white-haired seventysomething who shows early signs of dementia but still commands an undiminished sexual energy. “I’m not an invalid,” he coos as Mona bathes him in the tub, to which she replies, “yes, you are,” in a supplicant tone that hints at a rich history of power games between them.
Later that same night, Douglas will force Eleni to call a stranger, pretend that she’s their granddaughter, and ask for money — he’ll wrap the phone cord around the nurse’s body as she talks and shove her against the wall as they kiss. She’s into it. So into it that he has to clarify the terms of his whole deal: “If you’re looking for a pogo stick, I’m really not your guy.” But Eleni isn’t looking for anything to bounce on. She just wants to be needed, and maybe to need someone in return. Someone who will see her for who she really is and allow her the fantasy of pretending she isn’t being herself when she cons vulnerable strangers out of their money — when she exploits how enthralled those strangers are by the care they have for their loved ones.
“Night Nurse” doesn’t belabor the psychology, as Bernstein prefers to express her story through heavy-lidded suggestion. Somnambulating from the moment it starts, the film moves through a series of beautifully arranged poses that stretch their latent meaning thin across the surface (Lidia Nikonova’s cinematography lacquers every shot with a seductive dreaminess). We see Douglas smoking in a lawn chair with Mona and Eleni curled around his feet. Eleni riding in the backseat of a convertible as the wind blows through her curls. The full staff of nurses — all of them under Douglas’ sway — stumbling around his condo in a state of zonked out bliss as they roll on the prescription drugs they’ve stolen from the residents.
Once you’ve seen one shot of this movie, you’ve practically seen them all, at least until things escalate during a rushed and unsatisfying third act that forces Eleni into an honest confrontation with herself. People will do just about anything to feel needed — they’ll give whatever degree of care allows them to receive it in return. “Night Nurse” understands that desire, but remains far too numb to treat it.
Grade: C+
The Independent Film Company will relase “Night Nurse” in theaters on Friday, July 10.
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