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6 days ago
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‘Amrum' Review: Diane Kruger in Fatih Akin's Sentimental Drama Set During the Last Days of Nazi Germany
In Amrum, Fatih Akin stages a sentimental conversation between himself and his mentor, the German director Hark Bohm. This project, which premiered at Cannes outside the main competition, was born of a collaboration between the two filmmakers: Bohm wrote the screenplay, which is based on memories of his youth in the waning days of World War II, and Akin directed (as well as helped edit the script). Indeed, one of the film's intertitles calls Amrum a 'Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin.' That's a useful note, because it announces Amrum as atypical of the Turkish-German filmmaker's usual offerings. It doesn't have the thriller textures of In the Fade or the grittiness of Head-On. With its focus on the experiences of a young boy, Amrum most closely aligns with Akin's 2016 coming-of-age drama Goodbye Berlin. More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes Gives Warm Welcome to Dardennes and 'Young Mother's Home' 'Resurrection' Review: Director Bi Gan's Beguiling, Beautifully Realized Journey Through the Life, Death and Possible Rebirth of Cinema 'Woman and Child' Review: An Unwieldy Iranian Melodrama Sustained by Great Performances and a Gifted Young Director But even that film, with its surreal elements, had a touch more edge. Amrum lives in the category of movies that confront the cruelty of Nazism through the perspective of children. It's less cloying than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas but more earnest than JoJo Rabbit. The film stars returning Akin collaborator Diane Kruger as an anti-fascist farmer on the titular island off the German coast, and features a strong turn from Jasper Ole Billerbeck as protagonist Nanning. We meet Nanning in the summer of 1945, working alongside his friend Hermann (Klan Koppke) on a farm run by Tessa (Kruger). As they till the land, a horse and buggy filled with people pulls up and a brief conversation between Tessa and the driver reveals that those in the wagon are Russian-born German refugees who have been sent from Berlin. Tessa, fed up with the war and keenly aware of diminishing resources within this tight-knit community, denigrates the Nazi cause and hopes for an end to it all. Ignorant to the implication of Tessa's statement, Nanning alludes to it later at dinner with his mother Hille (Laura Tonke) and his aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister). He asks if his father will be home soon because the war is almost over. Hille, a fierce Nazi loyalist, is appalled by the question and the next day she reports Tessa to the Nazi authorities. Nanning loses his job and is labeled a rat by his peers. Akin uses this early moment to establish the tension between Amrum's long-time, working-class residents and the Nazis transplanted there because of the war. Nanning, who is a member of the Hitler Youth corp and whose father plays a critical role within the Nazi party, doesn't question how he's seen by others until his mother reports Tessa to the authorities. But still, he remains loyal to her. The drama in Amrum kicks off when Hille, pregnant with her fourth child, becomes depressed by Hitler's diminishing influence. At her lowest point, she off-handedly wishes for white bread, butter and honey, and Nanning, a child who wants his mother to feel better, takes it as a mandate. He sets off on a series of quests to find these rare goods. His adventures take him across the island, where he interacts with an assortment of people with different political views. He also comes to understand more about his family's personal history and the depth of his mother and father's cruelty. Billerbeck's performance is Amrum's emotional engine. The actor channels Nanning's initial naïveté through sorrowful eyes that grow more steely as his adventures harden him to harsh realities. He captures the adolescent desire to fit in and balances that well with the grief that comes from realizing your parents are not who you thought they were. Kruger's role in Amrum is minor but affecting. She plays Tessa, a potato farmer, as a kind of counterpart to Hille. Unlike Nanning's mother, Tessa doesn't blindly support the Nazis and doesn't see Hitler as the path to Germany's salvation. There's a groundedness to her character, who embodies a rare kind of moral clarity. Amrum is hardly a piece of fascist apologia nor does it try to build a sympathetic portrait of Nazis. Akin uses a child's perspective to wrestle with a nation's conception of itself in the waning days of brutality. Still, one does wonder if the message about the Third Reich's rotten core gets lost in the classic, edenic cinematography (by Karl Walter Lindenlaub). Akin leans into a gorgeous visual language that evokes nostalgia. He trades frenetic jump cuts and hectic camera angles that define films like Head-On for meditative wide shots that bask in the scale and beauty of the island. Some of the most compelling scenes in Amrum focus on the economy of conflict and how war turns basic commodities — eggs, flour and even sugar — into luxury goods. As Nanning procures these items for his mother, evidence of the Nazis' weakened authority mounts. His mother's depression worsens — especially at the news of Hitler's death — and the young boy feels intensifying pressure to help alleviate it. But the more he learns about his parents and the island, the more he must contend with his own sense of morality. What does it mean to lose faith in one's role models and form an identity outside their ideological purview? It's a conventional narrative drama, but Amrum approaches this question with commendable tenderness. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
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22-05-2025
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German Works by Fatih Akin, Mascha Schilinski, Christian Petzold Unspool in Cannes, Animation Set for Major Market Showcase
German films and co-productions in Cannes this year are sure to entice festgoers and buyers alike with an eclectic selection heavy on historical drama and animation fare. Highly anticipated works by Fatih Akin, Mascha Schilinski and Christian Petzold are premiering at the festival along with German co-productions from Wes Anderson, Sergei Loznitsa and Kirill Serebrennikov that explore postwar Germany, lives intertwined through time, loss and grief, international espionage, Stalin's Great Purge and a war criminal's escape from justice. More from Variety Wes Anderson Mocks Trump's Movie Tariffs at Cannes: 'Can You Hold Up the Movie in Customs? It Doesn't Ship That Way' Wes Anderson Powers Satyajit Ray's 'Aranyer Din Ratri' Rescue for Cannes Classics Wes Anderson Delights Cannes as 'Phoenician Scheme' Lands 6.5-Minute Standing Ovation, Leading Lady Mia Threapleton Overcome With Tears Unspooling in Cannes Premiere, Akin's 'Amrum' is a family drama set in 1945 on the titular North Sea German island and based on the autobiographical novel of screenwriter Hark Bohm, who also penned the script. It centers on 12-year-old Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck), who does everything he can to help his mother feed the family during the last days of the war, only to face all new challenges when peace finally arrives. The Beta Cinema title also stars Diane Kruger, Laura Tonke, Lisa Hagmeister, Detlev Buck and Matthias Schweighöfer. ''Amrum' is a very special project: it combines Hark Bohm's personal story with Fatih Akin's signature style and brings a piece of Schleswig-Holstein to the Croisette,' noted Helge Albers, CEO of regional funder MOIN, which supported the pic. Vying for the Golden Palm, Schilinski's sophomore work, 'Sound of Falling,' produced by Studio Zentral and handled internationally by MK2 Films, tells the story of four women from different time periods who spend their youth on the same farmstead and whose lives are eerily intertwined. Petzold's 'Miroirs No. 3,' sold by The Match Factory, screens in Directors' Fortnight and marks the director's fourth collaboration with Paula Beer, who plays a music student struggling with the sudden loss of her boyfriend and the mysterious family who offers her assistance. Anderson's U.S.-German co-production 'The Phoenician Scheme,' co-produced by and shot at Studio Babelsberg near Berlin, also premieres in competition. Boasting an all-star cast, the period film stars Benicio del Toro as a European business magnate facing major international challenges to his ambitious infrastructure project in the fictional West Asian nation of Phoenicia. Focus Features is distributing the film globally. Likewise in competition is Loznitsa's 1937-set 'Two Prosecutors,' whose producers include Leipzig-based LOOKSfilm. The Coproduction Office title follows an idealistic young Soviet prosecutor who comes across a letter written by a prisoner. Believing the man to be a victim of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) — at the time, the Soviet Union's dreaded interior ministry and secret police — the prosecutor embarks on a dangerous journey in the pursuit of justice in Stalin's USSR. Serebrennikov's 'The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,' based on the novel by Olivier Guez and co-produced by Berlin-base Lupa Film, screens in Cannes Premiere, with Kinology handling international sales. German actor August Diehl stars as the notorious Nazi doctor who, as a fugitive, flees to South America following World War II, eluding capture for his crimes. Also vying for the Golden Palm are Joachim Trier's Scandinavian drama 'Sentimental Value,' which counts Berlin-based Komplizen Film among its co-producers; and Kleber Mendonça Filho's historical thriller 'The Secret Agent,' set in 1977 Brazil and starring Wagner Moura and Udo Kier and co-produced by Berlin's One Two Films. Other competition titles with German co-producers include Carla Simón's Spanish drama 'Romería' (Ventall Cinema); 'La petite dernière' by French filmmaker Hafsia Herzi (Katuh Studio); and Tarik Saleh's Egyptian drama 'Eagles of the Republic' (Films Boutique). German producers likewise backed a number of Un Certain Regard selections, including Morad Mostafa's Cairo-set 'Aisha Can't Fly' (Mayana Film); Francesco Sossai's Italian drama 'The Last One for the Road' (Maze Pictures) and Diego Céspedes' 1980s-set Chilean tale 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' (Weydemann Bros.). Also unspooling in the sidebar is Arab and Tarzan Nasser's 'Once Upon a Time in Gaza,' which counts Hamburg companies Riva Filmproduktion and Red Balloon among its co-producers. The film follows on from the Nasser brothers' festival hit 'Gaza mon Amour.' This year's Cannes Film Market, meanwhile, boasts German comedy, family, drama, documentary and animated fare. Picture Tree Intl. (PTI) is presenting Simon Verhoeven's 'Old White Man' from Wiedemann & Berg and Sentana Filmproduktion. The comedy stars Jan Josef Liefers as advertising manager Heinz, who sets out to prove he's no old white man with a carefully orchestrated dinner party intended to secure a promotion but that instead turns into a minefield of political correctness, awkward revelations and unexpected chaos. PTI is also screening 'Prank,' a family adventure-comedy directed by Benjamin Heisenberg ('The Robber'), who co-wrote the script with Peer Klehmet ('The Famous Five'). Produced by Berlin-based Kundschafter Film and Zurich's Tellfilm, the film follows 12-year-old Chinese exchange student Xi Zhou (Max Zheng), whose seemingly innocent April Fool's prank spirals out of control and drags his host family, their son Lucas (Noèl Gabriel Kipp) and his crush Charly (Maïmouna Rudolph-Mbacké) into a tumultuous adventure. Among the titles presented by Pluto Film are two award-winning German works: Julia Lemke and Anna Koch's Berlinale documentary 'Circusboy,' about 11-year-old Santino, a child of the circus; and Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay's film crew thriller 'Hysteria,' which won the European Cinema Label in Berlin. The Playmaker Munich offers Christina Tournatzès' 'Karla,' based on a true story, about a 12-year-old girl who, in 1962 Munich, files a complaint against her own father, seeking protection from years of abuse. The company also presents Viktor Jakovleski and Nikias Chryssos' 'Rave On,' which follows Kosmo, a reclusive music producer who tries to deliver his latest record to a legendary DJ playing in Berlin's most notorious techno club, but what begins as a simple mission soon derails into an existential rave odyssey. Aaron Altaras and Klemens Schick star. Likewise in The Playmaker lineup is Norbert Lechner's 'The Secret Floor,' in which 12-year-old Karli, newly arrived in the Alps, where his parents have acquired a hotel, discovers he can travel back in time in the building's old elevator – to the year 1938. There he befriends lively Jewish girl Hannah and shoeshiner Georg and witnesses the rising menace of the Third Reich. Family entertainment specialist Studio 100, meanwhile, is showcasing a slew of animation productions: 'Heidi – Rescue of the Lynx,' by Tobias Schwarz and Aizea Roca and set for release this year, follows the spirited 8-year-old Swiss heroine who lives in the Alps with her gruff but loving grandfather. After rescuing an injured lynx cub, she uncovers a dastardly plot by a sly industrialist that threatens her beloved home and the entire alpine ecosystem. In 'Arnie & Barney,' by Sean Heuston and set for delivery in 2026, an ant platoon tries to save their community during a severe drought. Not cut out for heroics, inept ant soldiers Arnie and Barney decide to tackle the problem by themselves, inadvertently becoming the most unlikely of heroes in the process. 'Conni – Mystery of the Crane,' by Dirk Hampel, follows a young girl and her friends who help a hurt crane recover from his injuries in the hope that he can fly south with his flock. Currenty in production, the film is also set for delivery in 2026. In Rob Sprackling and Raúl Garcia's 'Flamingo Flamenco,' a dancing flamingo named Rosie is left traumatized after losing her sister to an attack by wild dogs. A shadow of her former self, the grieving Rosie has also lost the joy of dance – until she meets Carlos, a carefree and exuberant lizard who encourages her to dance once more. Currently in production, 'Flamingo Flamenco' is set for release in 2027. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
18-05-2025
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Cannes: Fatih Akin's ‘Amrum' Sells Wide Ahead of Festival Bow
Beta Cinema has closed multiple international deals for Fatih Akin's Amrum ahead of its world premiere in Cannes on Thursday, selling the German period drama to France (Dulac Distribution), Spain (A Contracorriente), Japan (Bitters End), Benelux (Cherry Pickers), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Cinemart), Former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (MCF) and Brasil (Imovision). Diane Kruger co-stars in the feature, which Akin co-wrote with German director and screenwriter Hark Bohm, based on Bohm's own childhood memories of growing up in the final weeks of World War 2 on the secluded North Sea island of Amrum. Life is hard on the island, but for 12-year-old Nanning (newcomer Jasper Billerbeck) it feels like paradise on earth. When the war ends, however, darker secrets about his family come to the surface. Laura Tonke, Lisa Hagmeister, Kian Köppke, and Matthias Schweighöfer co-star. More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes: Jackie Chan's 'The Shadow's Edge' Sells Wide Sony Pictures Entertainment Full-Year Profit Slips 4 Percent to $774 Million Cannes Rising Star: Meet Harris Dickinson's French 'Urchin' Gem, Megan Northam Warner Bros. Pictures Germany will release Amrum in Germany-speaking territories on Oct. 9. Akin's last time in Cannes was with In the Fade in 2017. The thriller, also inspired by real events, starred Kruger as a women who seeks revenge after her husband and son are killed by neo-Nazis. The role won Kruger Cannes' best actress honor. Akin had its international breakthrough in 2004 with Head-On, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival. His 2007 feature The Edge of Heaven won Cannes' best screenplay award and 2009 comedy Soul Kitchen took a special jury prize in Venice. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
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18-05-2025
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Diane Kruger Goes Home to Reteam With Fatih Akin for ‘Amrum': 'We Bring Out the Best in Each Other'
Their meet cute was 2012 in Cannes. Diane Kruger — Hollywood star of Troy, National Treasure and Inglourious Basterds — was on the jury. German director Fatih Akin had a documentary screening at the festival. Kruger had been an Akin superfan ever since his breakout Head-On — a gritty, violent love story about a young German-Turkish woman trying to break free of her religious, restrictive family — which won Berlin's Golden Bear in 2004. 'Fatih for me is the best German director we have, the most modern,' says Kruger, who was born and raised in Germany but began acting in French and then American movies. 'I had to meet him, so I sort of invited myself to the afterparty for his film, where he was DJ-ing. I went up and said: 'I'm a fan. If you ever have a role for me, it would be a dream to work together.' ' 'I never forgot,' says Akin, speaking on a joint Zoom with Kruger, he in Hamburg, she in L.A. Five years later, Akin sent Kruger the script for In the Fade, a thriller inspired by series of real-world attacks by right-wing terrorists on immigrants in Germany. Kruger was to play Katja, the hard-drinking, tatted-up wife of a Kurdish drug dealer gone straight who turns avenging angel after her man and their young son are murdered in a neo-Nazi bombing. It was unlike anything Kruger had played before. More from The Hollywood Reporter Angelina Jolie Delivers Humanitarian Message at Chopard Dinner in Front of Quentin Tarantino, Cannes Jury: "None of Us Are Naive" Lynne Ramsay, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson Toast 'Die, My Love' at Cannes Dinner Hosted by The Hollywood Reporter and Longines Can Cannes Help California Get Its Groove Back? 'The first time I read it, I knew this could be the role of my life,' she remembers. She wasn't wrong. In the Fade premiered at Cannes in 2017. Kruger won the Palme for best actress. The film went on to win the Golden Globe for best international feature and was Germany's entry for the Oscars. Kruger and Akin got some of the best reviews of their careers. 'After that, I told Fatih: 'If you need me for anything, for one day, as an extra to stand in the background, I'm there,' ' says Kruger. It's taken another eight years, but Akin and Kruger are back together, and back in Cannes, with their new collaboration, Amrum. This time it's Akin who is moving out of his comfort zone. The 1940s period drama, about a young boy growing up in the final days of World War II, in a family with a lot of dark secrets, isn't, in fact, Akin's story. It's Hark Bohm's, Akin's co-screenwriter on In the Fade and 2016 German hit Goodbye Berlin. 'Hark told me about his childhood in [the North Frisian Island] Amrum, about having nothing to eat at the end of the war, about his mother, who was a Nazi, and I said, 'You have to make that movie!' ' Akin recalls. 'I just planned to produce it. But then Hark got sick and he asked me to take over directing.' Casting Kruger in a supporting role as Tessa, a potato farmer and the one anti-fascist on the island, was Bohm's idea. Initially, Akin thought she was 'maybe too glamorous' to play the role. To deflect from her distracting beauty, he outfitted Tessa with a pair of jug ears. 'I get that all the time from directors, everyone sees me as a Hollywood actress, even though I'm not from Hollywood,' says Kruger. 'Directors are always trying to put me in wigs and costumes, to make me fatter or use makeup to get a rougher look. I always tell them: I'd rather act the role than glue it on.' When it came to Tessa, Kruger already had a way in. 'I grew up in the countryside. I know these women, who have this energy, this vitality, but are also incredibly tough. I based her on my grandmother, Angela, who I grew up with. She'd wake up at sunrise every morning and was in the fields, picking strawberries, pickling cabbage.' For Akin, finding the key to telling Bohm's story was more challenging. 'I'm German, sure, I was born here, but I didn't grow up like this, I didn't have a Nazi mother. I'm a big city kid,' he explains. 'I can sit a bunch of gangsters around a table, Turkish gangsters, Albanian gangsters, Arab gangsters, and I know what they're going to say, how they're going to act. But a bunch of Germans sitting down to have dinner — how does that work?' Akin watched Edgar Reitz's epic Heimat film cycle — which traces the life of a German family from the 1840s through the 2000s — for clues on how to 'with precision, but without cliché, capture the German soul.' The German soul has been much on Akin's mind of late. While Amrum is set in the late 1940s, its theme of confronting Germany's Nazi past feels frighteningly relevant. At German elections in February, the far-right AfD party, which Germany's own security forces have certified as extremist, won 20 percent of the vote. 'If you have 12 million people who vote for a right-wing extremist party, then, automatically, someone you know is related to them. A brother-in-law, a niece. You have people in your family or your circle that are voting far-right,' he says. 'And that's the story of the film. Because that is my home.' Both Kruger and Akin hope they won't have to wait another eight years for their next collaboration. Plans for a Marlene Dietrich biopic are on ice — 'We'll see if that happens,' says Kruger, 'but I think we'll have something else we'll do together first.' 'Everything I write, every film I do now, I think: 'Can Diane play this?' ' adds Akin. 'Even if it's a film with just men and gangsters, I think, 'Maybe Diane could play one of the gangsters, with a mustache? Could she play an Arab?' If I were to make a film just with animals, I'd try to cast her. I just love working with her. We bring out the best in each other.' Anrum bowed as a Cannes Premiere out of competition on May 15. Beta Cinema is handling world sales. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
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‘Nouvelle Vague' Review: Richard Linklater's Enjoyable Deep Dive Celebrates How Godard's ‘Breathless' Came to Life
The official synopsis for Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague describes it as 'the story of Godard making Breathless, told in the style and spirit in which Godard made Breathless.' It's a catchy pitch but also a bit deceiving. Godard's 1960 film broke all sorts of narrative and stylistic conventions, writing its own rules about what a movie could do and paving the way for modern cinema as we know it. Linklater's charming and well-researched homage is much more traditional: Told in a linear fashion, shot with a sizeable crew, featuring actors who look and act like the famous people they're playing, relying on tons of VFX shots to recreate Paris at the time, it's a far cry from the style of Godard. And yet it does an impressive job capturing the spirit of the man at work, highlighting what it took — and often didn't take — to put his groundbreaking movie together. More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes: Young Danish Collective Reboots Dogma for New Generation Diane Kruger Goes Home to Reteam With Fatih Akin for 'Amrum': "We Bring Out the Best in Each Other" Angelina Jolie Delivers Humanitarian Message at Chopard Dinner in Front of Quentin Tarantino, Cannes Jury: "None of Us Are Naive" No stranger to experimenting himself, Linklater has dabbled in all sorts of genres throughout his career, from his breakthrough 1990 indie Slacker to animated features like A Scanner Darkly or Waking Life; from Hollywood comedies like School of Rock to a project like Boyhood, shot over a decade with the same actors as they gradually aged. The Houston-born director has always toyed with film form — albeit in ways adhering to more classical modes of storytelling — so it's not entirely a surprise that he was fascinated enough by Godard's process to make an entire movie about it. Loaded with factoids concerning Breathless' pre-production and chaotic 20-day shoot, with cameos by a who's-who of New Wave members, Nouvelle Vague seems destined for viewers who immediately know what its title means. In other words, it's a cinephile's film through and through — a making-of that won't make much sense to anyone who hasn't seen the original movie. But it's also breezy and relatively entertaining, never taking itself too seriously while highlighting an extremely serious moment in film history. Linklater doesn't mimic Godard here, though he gives us a good idea of what the director — played by newcomer Guillaume Marbeck, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the man himself — could have been like to work with. In a nutshell, Godard was impossible, refusing to write a real script, calling it a day on set when he ran out of ideas, disrespecting laws of filmic continuity and getting into a fistfight at one point with his exasperated producer, George de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst). Yet he was also witty, wise, quite the charmer, and obsessed with making something that had never been done before. The opening of Nouvelle Vague shows Godard, who was just shy of 30, trailing behind fellow Cahiers du cinéma critics Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard), Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson), Jacques Rivette (Jonas Marmy) and Eric Rohmer (Côme Thieulin), all of whom had already directed their first feature. 'The best way to criticize a film is to make one,' a frustrated Godard quips to someone at a party, using one of the many JLG aphorisms that riddle a well-researched screenplay (written by Holly Gent, Vince Palmo, Michèle Halberstadt and Laetitia Masson). Riding the crest of the New Wave after the dual successes of Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Chabrol's Le Beau Serge, Godard manages to convince de Beauregard to back a low-budget independent feature (made for today's equivalent of $77,000) based on a news story about a gangster and his girlfriend. The director casts amateur boxer Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin, another uncanny resemblance) to play the male lead and Hollywood starlet Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch, convincing as a fish out of water) to play his American girlfriend. A skeleton crew is assembled for the shoot, including former war cameraman Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) and crafty assistant director Pierre Rissient (Benjamin Clery). The rest of Nouvelle Vague offers a daily account of what happened on the Breathless set, and it may surprise those who've never read anything about the movie's history. Since there was only ever a treatment (co-written with Truffaut), Godard made scenes up as he went along, shooting without sound so the actors could dub themselves in post. He rarely did more than one or two takes and preferred to rush through sequences, improvising and suddenly stopping when he was uninspired. Sometimes, the cast and crew would spend all day hanging around a café in Montparnasse while Godard scribbled ideas on napkins. The making of Breathless looks like amateur hour, which is what the deadpan Coutard and some of the other crew members seem to think. A highly skeptical Seberg does her best to perform amid all the chaos, while Belmondo just rolls with the punches and has a great time. And yet from day one, Godard seems so certain of what he thinks and wants — 'reality is not continuity!', he snaps at the script girl (Pauline Belle) when she complains about a misplaced prop — that he wins most of his cast and crew over. It also helps that he's a disarmingly funny guy capable of both dishing out jokes and taking them. Linklater smartly focuses on the lighter side of a director known for heavy works that sit at the very top of the arthouse pyramid, whereas in reality, Godard was often half-comedian and half-film-philosopher. This doesn't mean he blows off the importance of making his first feature, and even when he experiences setbacks he keeps his eyes on the prize ('Disappointments are temporary, film is forever,' he says with utter self-assurance). If wannabe directors take anything away from Nouvelle Vague, it's that Godard had an idea of where he wanted to go but never knew how he would get there. His very openness to possibility is what made his movies so original. Linklater's film is less innovative than anything JLG made, but it offers a rare and informed inside look at a pivotal moment not only of the director's career, but of film history in general. Along with all the New Wave heavyweights, Nouvelle Vague makes room for lesser-known figures like Rissient or Suzanne Schiffman (Jodie Ruth Forest), who went on to co-write scripts with Truffaut and Rivette. And it underlines how the movement didn't come out of nowhere, but was fathered by a handful of seasoned auteurs — Jean-Pierre Melville (Tom Novembre), Roberto Rosselini (Laurent Mothe) and Robert Bresson (Aurélien Lorgnier) — who influenced Godard and his cohorts. The research carries over to David Chambille's impressively authentic black-and-white photography, which makes the action look like it was shot on film stock back in 1959. Sets by Katia Wyszkop recreate Paris interiors of the epoch, including the original Cahiers offices and various cafés all around town. As for the exteriors, 300 shots required extensive VFX to whisk us back to the time period, especially for the famous scenes in Breathless that were lensed on a jam-packed Champs-Elysées. It's an impressive package that certainly required more money and manpower than Godard's first feature did, while ironically enough, the moral of this movie is that a big budget and crew aren't needed to make something great. Linklater celebrates JLG's audacity even if he's directed something more conventional (although much to his credit, he directed it almost entirely in French). If Nouvelle Vague is not exactly Breathless, it's a loving homage to the crazy way Breathless was made — back when you could shoot movies fast, cheap and out of control, and somehow change cinema in the process. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
