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| Nouvelle Vague team line-up in Cannes, from left: Richard Linklater, Aubry Dullin (who plays Jean-Paul Belmondo); Zoey Deutch (who plays Breathless’s leading lady Jean Seberg) and Guillaume Marbeck (who incarnates Jean-Luc Godard) Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival |
If any director is living his best life at this year’s 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival it has to be Richard Linklater, long time champion of indy filmmaking. He has just taken the audacious step of making his first film in French, Nouvelle Vague, which chronicles the creation of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, an influence on generations of filmmakers including Linklater himself.
“I thought they might hate an American director who had the effrontery to take this on and that it would never be shown at least in France. I know how much Godard means to the French. I admit it was crazy idea, but then film people are crazy. I knew enough French to be able to make the movie. French is the language of cinema, and it was just another colour on the palette,” he said.
In the event he need not have worried. Cannes cinephiles have been singing his praises and the general consensus appears to be that it is one of the festival’s highlights so far.
“I spent quite a few years just thinking about it, but in the way of things it suddenly happened more quickly than I had imagined. A year before shooting I came over to Paris to meet the crew and pin down the casting. The actors had to be virtually known but bare a resemblance to the people they were playing,” he added
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| Richard Linklater: 'I really admire the French for taking care of their film industry' Photo: Richard Mowe |
He found a pitch perfect Godard in Guillaume Marbeck, an amazingly youthful Jean-Paul Belmondo in Aubry Dullin and Zoey Deutch as Breathless’s leading lady Jean Seberg.
Linklater who still lives in Austin, Texas, and helps to run the film society that he founded 40 years ago, described it as “a fun journey on several levels.” Because the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague had been such an influence on him it felt like he was “erasing my own history". He added: “I felt like I was 20 again and going back in time both personally and cinematically. With my first film Slacker I was the only who had it my head. You had to believe in yourself because nobody else would.”
The making of Breathless was so well documented by Godard and others that it was relatively easy to get all those practical details right. “We wanted to feel how it looked when you were able to show up and shoot on the street. I love François Truffaut’s notion that making a film is ‘an act of love’ - you exist in this bubble of creativity and it is all about what they are doing in their magical little world.”
The filmmaker, who shot the Before Sunrise, Before Midnight and Before Sunset trilogy in Paris, feels distinctly optimistic about cinema and the younger generation. “In Austin we have all these youngsters coming to see films at the film society I started. Cinema has to be optimistic because it has always been under attack. Audiences like stories to be told in the format of feature films but admittedly it is harder to get them seen. Despite that films have long lives now, and there is no one purity in how you watch them. Martin Scorsese after all grew up watching movies on a black and white TV and Quentin Tarantino had his video store. Cinemas are the cathedrals of the business, but you can worship wherever you are.”
His thoughts on President Donald Trump’s idea of imposing 100 per cent tariffs on films made outside the US suggest that “it’s not going to happen, right? The guy changes his mind like 50 times a day”.
The costs of a low budget film in the US has barely changed in the last 60 years and the main consideration is tailoring the film to the money available.
“I really admire the French for taking care of their film industry. They ensure it is healthy and they nurture and help it from production to distribution. I think we could use some of that attitude in the States,” he added.
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| Zoey Deutch who plays Jean Seberg in Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague Photo: Richard Mowe |
Linklater previously told me about roots and why he still lives in Austin. “If you grew up in the south in some small town it is the sort of place you escaped to get out of where you lived. It has a big college and it was primarily known for its music scene – Willy Nelson lived there. It is a kind of cultural oasis. Texas is a rather conservative state but Austin is a pretty liberal town.
“I moved there because I could not afford to live in Los Angeles so I decided to stay there and work. I was envious of the music culture so we decided to build up the movie culture. Austin has become a rather large city now and rather different from the place portrayed in Slackers. It was a smaller town then and there was nothing going on. Now there are huge skyscrapers rather than abandoned buildings. Now it is the 11th largest city in the States and it is getting bigger.”
He appears to relish his position as a Hollywood outsider, including taking 12 years to shoot his hit film Boyhood. “The studios seems a bit abstract to me now – even after the success of Boyhood they did not come calling for my next film. They know me too well. I get strange offers all the time but most of the time they do need a director like me. For many of the big action films the parameters are already set - they might as well get the stunt co-ordinator to direct it. Mostly I turn down everything that they ask me to do.”
Despite his encouragement of the younger generations he is reluctant to dish out advice to budding filmmakers. “You have to be able to plant your flag and you have to proceed. In the arts it is a specific and wilful journey for the individual. You have to be strong and single-minded, a little crazy and really driven. My advice is not to listen to any advice but to follow your impulses. The world will let you know at some point if they want you to continue. That is why I did not go to film school because I did not want anyone telling me what to do.”
It has been almost 20 years since Linklater has been in the Competition at the Cannes Film Festival when he presented Fast Food Nation in 2006. Nouvelle Vague, his 33rd feature, brings it all full circle. ““It’s the story of a personal revolution of cinema led by a man, and by everyone around him,” Linklater said.
Staying true to his obsession for the passing of time and to his adventurous artistic style, the director delighted in revisiting a film movement that changed the history of cinema by using techniques and characteristics of that time, between elliptical editing, black and white, breaks in tone, and hand-held cameras.
He hopes the takeaway will be an unashamedly nostalgic declaration of love for cinema.
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| Director Richard Linklater, right, and his 'perfect' Jean-Luc Godard played by Guillaume Marbeck Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival |
