Parents' Guide to Nouvelle Vague

For die-hard cinema buffs, this drama, crafted to look like a vintage French New Wave film, will be a pure pleasure. But some homework is required to fully enjoy Nouvelle Vague; there's not much here to invite newcomers in. Directed by Richard Linklater in what's clearly meant to be a valentine to a lost era, Nouvelle Vague introduces its many characters with printed titles, but a lot of them will be unfamiliar to all but the most devoted scholars of the New Wave—like script supervisor Suzon Faye (Pauline Belle), who constantly butts heads with Godard over continuity, and Seberg's contractual makeup artist, Phuong Maittret (Jade Phan-Gia). (The two women bond over their mutual frustration.) Other New Wavers are here, too, including Cahiers du Cinéma co-workers Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette; their pal Suzanne Schiffman; and other filmmakers or filmmakers-to-be: Jean Cocteau, Agnès Varda, Jean-Pierre Melville, Roberto Rossellini, Robert Bresson, etc. All of them are played by remarkable dead ringers who are almost indistinguishable from the real people.

The drama is lean and spare, focusing largely on the nuts and bolts of this guerilla-type production. Much of the friction comes from Seberg, who has just worked with Otto Preminger on Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse and is dismayed by Godard's ramshackle shoot. But she also brings spirit and bounce to things, bonding with Belmondo and responding to his unfettered brand of cool. (She teaches him a funny little dance in a couple of charming sequences.) The movie intricately and with minute detail re-creates moments from the movie that all of this is leading up to: the 1960 masterpiece Breathless. Going into Nouvelle Vague without having seen Breathless is fairly pointless, but having an excuse to see it, again or for the first time, is always welcome.