Nouvelle Vague, a warm homage to the pioneers of French New Wave
A film about cinephiles for cinephiles is one way to describe 'Nouvelle Vague' ( New Wave), Richard Linklater's love letter to movies. You could also say that it is about the making of 'Breathless', which it is. But it's truly, gloriously more. It's about being young and alive, broke and audacious, lucking into friends who make you come alive, having each other's backs — all while changing the world.
In the 50s, a bunch of French film critics were busy discovering the joys of 'middlebrow Hollywood commercial' cinema, which was treated with disdain by a high-minded earlier generation. Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Chaude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were among those who contributed to Cahiers du Cinema, a journal which published these rebels-with-a-righteous-cause.
But writing trenchant prose and tearing into fresh releases for their scrappy journal wasn't enough after a time, and many of these turned to making their films. Thus was born the 'French New Wave', which changed the way movies were made.
How this particular group of film critics-turned-filmmakers became so influential — they may have been the 'OG influencers' — has been the subject of weighty tomes, but those who saw the films when they came out, and the scholars who came after were unanimous that Godard's debut A Bout de Souffle ( 'Breathless', 1960) was an instant classic.
Linklater's film will make those who adore Breathless nostalgic. Set in 1969, it is black and white, but it's not the luscious-lambent period black-and-white which could have distanced us; the matter-of-fact palette makes it all very life-like.
The actors who play Godard ( Guillaume Marbeck), Jean-Paul Belmondo ( Aubry Dullin) and Jean Seberg ( Zoey Deutch), Truffaut ( Adrien Rouyard), Chanrol ( Antoine Besson), could practically be doppelgangers, so amazingly alike are they.
All the familiar markers are in here. Belmondo's lips (the New Wavers loved Brando), Seberg's uber-stylish striped dresses, thin cigarettes, long tail-finned cars, cobbled Parisian streets, stubby handguns, and the catchy score take you right back to your first encounter with Breathless, when you were instantly smitten with French petty thieves and their pert American girl-friends while waiting for 'that' shot that made movie history.
But while 'Nouvelle Vague' is a homage, it isn't reverential. You can see Godard being annoying and obdurate. Early on, Seberg demands make-up and the former refuses it; in another instance, the director dismisses the person in charge of continuity, saying that's not what life is about. One of the pleasures of the film is how he uses famous quotes, as do several other characters: it's all very self-aware and a lot of fun.
Both Dullin, who captures Belmondo's sunny sexiness, and Deutch, all radiance even when she is irritated, are terrific: did Belmondo and Seberg have a moment in real life? We see a distinct, momentary spark.
Marbeck's Godard is impeccable. His trademark dark glasses do not come off anywhere in the film, even when he somersaults. His whims ( pack up, the shoot is over, or no shoot today because not-in-the-mood), the producer's panicky rants, and the baffled faces of the cast and crew do become a tad repetitive, and I did become a bit restive in those bits.
But perhaps it was important to recount just how shambolic, and learning-on-the-job the making of 'Breathless' was, not just for the mercurial, brilliant Godard, but for the rest of the cast too, who had no idea that they were at work on something that would turn iconic in its first run itself.
'Breathless' rewrote the rules of the game. Godard jumped. So did the movies.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
India Today
12 minutes ago
- India Today
Not just a bag, it is the OG Birkin (made for Jane Birkin) going on sale
The first ever Hermes Birkin bag - yes, the one crafted specifically for British-French actress and singer Jane Birkin - is set to be auctioned in Paris on July is the bag from where it all began. The first prototype, made for the late British actress Jane Birkin, will be sold at the Auction House Sotheby's during the Paris Couture Week. There is no starting bid price available publicly, as yet. However, interested bidders have to register on the official website and then might get an estimated price only 'upon request.'advertisementHailed as the world's most coveted 'it' handbag, the Birkin is not just another designer accessory. Made by the French luxury house Herms, it is a symbol of status, craftsmanship and also investment value. Even those with money to afford it wait for years to own it. Of course, it's also known to test your patience (iykyk). The Birkin bag will be put for exhibition before the final bid in Paris (Photo: Instagram/Sotheby's) For a bag that can only be availed with premium exclusivity, for it to go on sale could make records. 'The original Birkin holds the potential to redefine records,' Morgane Halimi, Sotheby's global handbag and fashion head, said in a it on view during The Luxury Sales at #SothebysNewYork from 6 - 12 June in a free, public exhibition," reads the caption of the acution house Instagram where it all beganThe origin story of the Hermes Birkin bag stems from a simple, everyday problem—finding a handbag spacious enough to hold 1984, during a flight from Paris to London, actress Jane Birkin was seated next to Hermes CEO Jean-Louis Dumas. After a few of her belongings spilled from her bag, a conversation sparked between the two. Birkin shared her frustration - as a mother - about not being able to find a bag that was both practical and stylish. Inspired by this exchange, Dumas sketched a design on an airplane sick bag, and the rest, we all know, is history. Jane Birkin with her birkin bag (Photo: Getty Photo ) This bag hasn't always been this hyped. It wasn't until the 1990s that it gained the exclusivity and demand it holds hard to getThe rarity and exclusivity that brand created for this bag is one of the reasons that build onto the hype. It is hard to get and not just because of the money but due to its exclusive availability as well. For once, money might just buy happiness, but not the Hermes trend suddenly took off after it was featured in an episode of Sex and the City, when Samantha Jones tried to get her hands on the luxury bag, only to be placed on a 5-year waitlist. The iconic line, 'It's not a bag. It's a Birkin,' became a pop culture bag is made with precision saddle stitching and may take about 18 - 40 hours to create. Then, each bag has a code that documents the year of making, the workshop where it was made and about the artisan who crafted it too. Victoria Beckham flaunting her Birkin Bag in hot pink. (Photo: Reuters) The cost of bags may vary depending on the size, material and other factors. The price range can be from USD 10,000, approx Rs 8,57,279, to USD 450,000, approx Rs 3,85,77, recently, this exclusivity got Hermes into a lawsuit. As per a Reuters report, a lawsuit was filed last year against the brand. "Hermes only gives customers with 'sufficient purchase history' a chance to buy a Birkin bag, which is handmade and can cost thousands of dollars," Reuters just a bag, it's an investmentGetting your hands on one might be a daunting task. While there are no 'official' wait lists, it is recommended to visit a store to buy needs to make a proper appointment, identify the right piece for themselves, and then wait depending on availability. This is where social skills to establish a rapport with the salesperson might just come into elusive luxury bag is dubbed a better investment than gold. Deloitte and Credit Suisse reported that Hermes Birkin bags had an average return of 38 percent in 2020. The resale value of a Birkin in pristine condition has significantly outpaced in IndiaSeveral fashion enthusiasts in India, like Kareena Kapoor Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Janhvi Kapoor abed Shilpa Shetty, often flaunt their Birkin bags. Birkin bag spotted in India! (Photo: Instagram/Kareena Kapoor, Twitter, Instagram screengrab) advertisementAnd when it comes to luxury fashion, trust Nita Ambani to never be far behind. She proudly owns a Neige Snow Faubourg Birkin - just another addition to her unmatched bag collection.
Scroll.in
an hour ago
- Scroll.in
‘The Use of Photography' by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie: A material representation of lovemaking
More than two decades after two classics on the subject of photography, Susan's Sontag's On Photography (1977), and Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida (1980, in French), the French Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux's The Use of Photography (co-written with the late French photographer and journalist, Marc Marie) was published in the original French in 2005, and in English translation by Alison L Strayer in 2024. Sontag's is a historical and sociological examination of the role played by photography in 1970s America. While Sontag's critical exploration is objective, Barthes' narrative is pensive and personal. There are no photographs in Sontag's book, while Barthes often used photographs to illustrate an argument or reading. After love The Use of Photography introduces interesting departures from Sontag and Barthes. The presence and meaning of the human face are central to Barthes' observations on photography, and the photographs in the book accentuate it. In striking contrast, Eranux's project in collaboration with her lover, Marie, keeps the human body – or the human object in photographs – out of the scene. For Ernaux, the photographs taken by Marie and her were meant to 'preserve images of the devastated landscape that remains after lovemaking.' Annie and her lover were not satisfied with making love and 'needed to preserve a material representation of the act'. They did this by clicking pictures of the accidental mise en scène as a mark of pleasure. The unique architecture of the photographs included hurriedly cast-off clothes, underclothes and shoes lying on the floor, sometimes against a larger background of the room filled with other objects. It was, in Annie's words, 'the objective trace of our pleasure.' This postcoital act of photographing – sometimes immediately, sometimes later – became an obsession for them. The rule they established was simple: to touch nothing till they were photographed, like 'the cops would do after a murder', as Marie put it. If anyone touched anything accidentally, the scene wouldn't be photographed. It was being faithful to the crime, a pact of ritual honesty. Sometimes, Ernaux writes, they struggled to recollect the room and day of lovemaking from the photograph. It was in the course of this newfound passion that the idea of writing separately on the photographs occurred to them. They also made the rule of not showing their drafts to each other until they had finished the project. Eroticism is a game of rules, and erotic photography replicates it by devising a way to deflect the gaze from the obvious object (the naked human body) to objects that suggest the intense act of nakedness. Ernaux and Marie's project can be precisely found in what Barthes says about erotic photography in contrast to pornography: 'The erotic photograph, on the contrary (and this is its very condition), does not make the sexual organs into a central object; it may very well not show them at all; it takes the spectator outside its frame'. Erotic photography, then, is simultaneously about the absence of the body and the reminder of its presence. This creates the necessary space for memory games. Ernaux finds the act of writing on the photographs in relation to the fleeting, sexual memory associated with them 'a sort of new erotic practice.' It meant for her a risky act of transgression that was 'more violent than to open up your sex.' Writing, unlike sex, was a public exposure of a private act. Taking this risk to its extreme has been Ernaux's lifelong occupation. The element of shock in The Use of Photography comes from the revelation that Ernaux has breast cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. Marc was obviously jolted when Ernaux broke the news to him in a matter-of-fact way while they were dining at a place on the cobbled street in Paris named Rue Servandoni. This aspect of their story and relationship adds a poignant and vulnerable layer to their project. Ernaux could lighten the effect by writing, 'Because of my totally smooth body he called me his mermaid-woman. The catheter like a growth protruding from my chest became a 'supernumerary bone''. Marie made it sensual by suggesting a haunting ménage à trois: 'For months, we live together as a threesome: death, A and me. Our companion was intrusive.' Eroticism, as Georges Bataille wrote in the introduction of Eroticism, Death and Sensuality (1962, in English translation by Mary Dalwood), is an affirmation of life to the point of death, which is quoted in the epigraph of Ernaux and Marie's book. But Bataille reads eroticism in a deeply religious manner. He connects eroticism to the desire to procreate, and finds it fundamentally violent in his imagination of human beings as discontinuous selves forcibly coming together in an act that violates their solitude. Since we die alone, Bataille thinks our attempts at making love are to transgress our existential limits and plunge into an act that borders on death, murder and suicide. Sex is the hastening of death by our attempts to escape it. Bataille hallucinates on sex. He would, however, have countered this by arguing that the briefly transgressive aspect of sex involves an element of hallucination. Octavio Paz appears more persuasive in the crucial distinction he makes between sex and eroticism in The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism (1995, translated from Spanish by Helen Lane): 'Eroticism is sex in action, but, because it either diverts it or denies it, it thwarts the goal of the sexual function. In sexuality, pleasure serves procreation; in erotic rituals, pleasure is an end in itself or has ends other than procreation.' Objects of recall The Use of Photography testifies to a double, psychological diversion after sex, through photography and writing. To divert the experience of something with another thing is to create modes of escape and intensification through which one can return – delayed – to what has been lost in time. The erotic nature of photography and writing in this project opens up the possibility to obsessively return to the original moment of desire. The 'use' of photography in that instrumental sense is to ensure that (modern) technology makes the afterlife of sexual memory possible. Here is a sample of Annie describing one of the photographs taken in her living room: 'Of all the things abandoned on the floor after lovemaking, shoes are the most moving – overturned, or upright but heading in opposite directions, or adrift on top of a heap of clothes but still far apart. The distance between them, when it can be seen in the photo, reflects the force with which they were flung off.' This description is reminiscent of André Breton's idea of 'convulsive beauty' in Mad Love (1987, translated from L'Amour Fou by Mary Ann Caws), where a certain art, or experience, involves 'affirming the reciprocal relations linking the object seen in its motion and in its repose.' Breton called it 'veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial'. The fixed image of clothes and shoes flung in haste offers the surreal image of objects that convey both motion and stillness, activating a memory or a perception of time past. There is a moment when Annie makes one of those startling connections between sex, photography and writing and the material trace of life that pervades each act: 'I realise that I am fascinated by photos in the same way I've been fascinated, since childhood, by blood, semen and urine stains on sheets, or old mattresses, discarded on pavements; by the stains of wine and food embedded in the wood of sideboards, the stains of coffee or greasy fingers on old letters… I realise I expect the same thing from writing. I want words to be like stains you cannot tear yourself away from.' Some objects are objects of recall. They initiate the possibility of what Marcel Proust explored in Remembrance of Things Past (originally, 1913) as mémoire involontaire, or involuntary memory. The purely material use of the word 'stain' removes the moral stain attached to that word. Life is a series of fragilities, comprising intimate proofs left behind by vulnerable beings of hunger and pleasure. Those proofs are often discovered in what is no longer useful, in what has been forever discarded, left behind, or expressed in some form or other, as unalterable as a stain on a piece of cloth, a pavement, a sidewalk, a cup, or words in a book. Each trace is a reminder of life, the sign of its inevitable erasure. Close to the finish, Ernaux pauses over the philosophical ache of the project: 'The pain of the photograph. It comes from wanting something other than what is. The boundless meaning of the photograph. A hole through which the fixed light of time, of nothingness is perceived. Every photo is metaphysical.' The essence of the photograph does not lie in what it shows, but in what it hides. The shadow that falls on the page, or the photograph, on what is written or clicked by the human hand, is the imperceptible presence of death. Writing, love making, or photography are hieroglyphic acts of time. The body performs them to enact its pleasures on itself, and lose it forever at the moment of execution. The Use of Photography takes us to the heart of our most delicious crisis. Manash Firag Bhattacharjee's latest book Gandhi: The End of Non-Violence was published earlier this year by Penguin Random House India.
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
13 hours ago
- Business Standard
Kamal Haasan's dual role: DMK views one RS seat as small price to pay
Haasan is a self-proclaimed atheist but on most other political issues, he has been flexible premium Aditi Phadnis Listen to This Article He is more than just an actor. He is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, an accomplished singer, a choreographer and director, the only one to have got 19 Filmfare awards, the most by any Indian. Seven films starring him have made it to the short list of the Oscars 'foreign films' category. He is fluent in English, French, and six Indian languages, including Kannada. His politics, however, is confusing. His electoral performance in that arena sub-par. Kamal Haasan will shortly become member of the Rajya Sabha with support from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) although his party, Makkal Neethi Maiam (MNM),
