Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2025)

[domino harvey]

Linklater’s next film will be about the filming of A bout de souffle

[hearthesilence]

Interesting. James Benning just announced he shot a new film that he's calling Breathless, giving little detail except that it has the exact same running time as Godard's film. Benning and Linklater of course have had a friendship that was the subject of Gabe Klinger's 2013 film about them - I wonder if there's any connection between Linklater and Benning's work?

EDIT (2/13): Benning posted this update:

Finished this film last December while convalescing from a week in the hospital. The film's called BREATHLESS, 87 minutes, 2023. It's the same length as Godard's, but with a more real narrative. It will premiere at the Centre Pompidou in Paris during the last week of March. Along with 11 other of my films. Hope to see you there.

[domino harvey]

Linklater’s next film will be about the filming of A bout de souffle

Here’s Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg — inspired casting, never would have occurred to me!

[tenia]

There's been posts on social networks about the movie's casting looking for a "teenager boy, between 16 and 18yo in March 2024, looking younger than this, and bearing a physical resemblance with Jean Pierre Léaud at 14".

Spoiler

[fiendishthingy]

According to this article and this casting notice (linked in the article), he's also seeking someone who resembles Martin LaSalle in Pickpocket.

[Red Screamer]

An article in this month’s Cahiers features pictures from the set and an interview with Linklater, including the tidbits that the film will be a comedy (but not like Le redoubtable) and that Linklater’s main New Wave inspiration here will be Rozier, since Adieu Philippine became one of his favorite movies after catching up with it recently.

[therewillbeblus]

Rozier is so up his alley, it's no wonder he connected with it! This just keeps getting better and better

[diamonds]

Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague

[Aspect]

That looks wonderful.

[domino harvey]

The guy playing Truffaut looks great, not sold on anything else here yet. Of two minds on the fidelity to recreating this milieu: it’s distracting how shot for shot some of this is, but conversely Deutch using the wrong inflection on “New York Herald Tribune” took me out, too— like, talk about missing an easy softball

[brundlefly]

Perhaps wrong on purpose so they could fix it in the dub.

It will be interesting to watch Linklater walk the line between fidelity and freedom, hope he errs toward the latter.

[Never Cursed]

Netflix bought this for a ton of money (for a French-language film). Seems like they’re gonna try to run it for awards season. I hope that, unlike his previous films, Linklater insisted upon a home video release and if at all possible a theatrical run

[Omensetter]

I sighed when I read the news, but it might be a good fit if one accepts that Netflix will always be a player? I'm curious who it outbid at the end. I think I'm fine with this because they only have the U.S. rights., which at least allows for a blu-ray to emerge from the U.K. (or Italy in the case of Hit Man). As someone who's posted on this physical media forum for twenty years, a physical disc is the end-goal after its run. Also, there are so many worthwhile films to see from September-December, that it's not really sustainable from a time and money perspective to catch PTA, Joachim Trier, Safdie (x2) et al. whilst retaining a life away from cinema. Purchasing a Netflix subscription for one month in late December to catch up with their slate is something of a respite, admittedly. Netflix existing isn't ideal, but I'm afraid it's easy to find a silver lining here.

[Never Cursed]

I sighed when I read the news, but it might be a good fit if one accepts that Netflix will always be a player? I'm curious who it outbid at the end.

There's no way that Janus/Sideshow/the collective yet relatively benevolent tendrils of Steven Rales didn't want it badly, given how much work Criterion has done with both Godard and Linklater, and I don't know if it's a coincidence that they announced their big festival purchase the day after this went to Netflix. But at the end of the day Netflix (somehow) has $4 million to burn on just the U.S. distribution rights for a movie like this, and Rales probably didn't want to spend that much.

[Walter Kurtz]

$4 million is an absurd amount of money to spend for a black & white, subtitled film about the French new wave when 99.99% of Americans don't know the difference between the nouvelle vague and a bidet. But at least they'll probably screen it for a week or so at the Egyptian and I do like the Egyptian.

[Matt]

Look how well Netflix did with Emilia Perez, though. And Linklater is a known quantity for Netflix since they distributed Hit Man and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood.

[Walter Kurtz]

I hope you're right. But Perez: I remember flying down to Mexico City when the Kubrick exhibition was there taking an entire four floors... easily the best SK presentation during that 20 year world tour. We went Friday afternoon... all day Saturday... and then a quick dinner and a walk to a 13-screen cinema nearby and couldn't get a ticket for anything. All 13 screens sold out. And then I see the demographics for U.S. box office and Hispanics (by percentage of penetration) are by far the most avid moviegoers in this country and it's not even close.

So Perez was the rare Hispanic-centered film... with known stars... and it was loud and splashy and colorful... and serving a large moviegoing demographic.

Vague? It's black and white... subtitles... no stars (really)... and serving who? Us.

The world use to be... people reading the New York Times on Sunday mornings... then it became USA Today... and now it's twitter.

The world used to care about directors. Not any more. Even cult Yankee directors have fallen off a cliff. Compare WA's recent films (in real $, not nominal $, thus butts in the seat) to Rushmore, Tenenbaums, and Aquatic. Not even close. Now only a few actors can open films. It's all IP. Or Nolan. I guess he's an IP brand. (C---- N----!)

I checked out old newspapers online to see what the cinema situation was in the early sixties in NYC and CHI. At the same time there would be a Bergman in one theater... Antonioni in another... Godard in a third.. Truffaut in a fourth... Fellini in a fifth... etc. Now its Marvel... Lucas... MI... something loud... something loud...

I hope you're right and new wave fever sweeps the U.S.!

But I fear the cultural world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

[The Curious Sofa]

David Fincher's Mank would be a better Netflix comparison. It did well financially, critically and on the awards circuit. And that despite the world never having cared about screenwriters.

[Walter Kurtz]

I was talking about theatrical revenue only (and Mank had only approx. $100,000 domestic compared to Perez's approx. $15,000,000). It is impossible to know what each film's streaming eyeball count is and the parameter to use to multiply that into a quasi-revenue effect.

But please share the financial numbers. I would like to be wrong.

[The Curious Sofa]

True, I got the "financially" wrong but Mank was also released in the middle of Covid. But I also believe Netflix cares about awards recognition, its good publicity for the brand and draws a certain audience to subscribe. And 4 million is nothing to them.

[Red Screamer]

Reports from the festival make this film sound too close to the version I expected Linklater to be too smart to make: referential, reverential, & cute, with, for example, characters speaking well-known quotes from their writing. While Cannes dispatches are often obtuse, and I like nearly all of Linklater's films (including those based on sketchier ideas than this), I'll still be going in somewhat wary now.

[Walter Kurtz]

True, I got the "financially" wrong but Mank was also released in the middle of Covid. But I also believe Netflix cares about awards recognition, its good publicity for the brand and draws a certain audience to subscribe. And 4 million is nothing to them.

I agree with all of that. But let's call it advertising expense on their P&L. Netflix outbid people who care about the theater experience and care about physical media releases and Netflix usually cares about neither. Janus etc care about theaters and physical media. Netflix cares about advertising, subsriptions, and the discounted value of future cash flows. Only.

Sure every business cares about that too. But I believe Janus etc also care about the quality of the journey, not just the bottom-line destination.

[Walter Kurtz]

I'll still be going in somewhat wary now.

My attraction to seeing this film is the meta aspect... especially for physical media lovers (and former ones). First you have the film. Then you have the behind-the-scenes footage. Then you have the movie of the behind-the-scenes footage. Which is tenderly, totally meta-weird.

[Black Hat]

Compare WA's recent films (in real $, not nominal $, thus butts in the seat) to Rushmore, Tenenbaums, and Aquatic. Not even close.

Wait, didn't The French Dispatch do well? Don't remember how Asteroid City did.

[Never Cursed]

Compare WA's recent films (in real $, not nominal $, thus butts in the seat) to Rushmore, Tenenbaums, and Aquatic. Not even close.

Wait, didn't The French Dispatch do well? Don't remember how Asteroid City did.

Both it and Asteroid City broke about even or lost money on the marketing. It doesn't really matter, given that they, unlike the earlier ones, were funded by one guy who likes Wes Anderson movies rather than a corporation

Also, Life Aquatic was a huge bomb and ended Anderson's association with Disney for good