Any time a notable figure of the French New Wave is introduced in Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” we’re treated to a momentary straight-on shot of them, with a nameplate — Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer — at the bottom of the screen.
It’s a little like Linklater, as he goes, is cataloging different species of the same 1950s genus, or playing a grand game of New Wave “Guess Who?”
“Nouvelle Vague” is principally about Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) and the making of his landmark feature debut, “Breathless.” But it is also a wider portrait of a moveable filmmaking feast, of an entire generation of French filmmakers who were passionately engaged, individually and as one, in changing cinema. In 1959, it’s a movement that’s on the move.
To a remarkable degree, Linklater’s film, in French and boxed into the Academy ratio, black-and-white style of “Breathless,” has fully imbibed that spirit,
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