films

NOUVELLE VAGUE

Stephen Troussé

Stephen Troussé

— 1 min read
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Directed by: Richard Linklater

Starring: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin

Certificate: 12A

Released: 30 January 2026

Rating: 8/10

Richard Linklater has perfected the knack of making films so charming you want to find a quiet corner in them and curl up with glee. With last year’s Blue Moon, he delivered a portrait of the doomed lyricist Lorenz Hart that made a little paradise of the theatre bars of mid-century New York. Now, he performs the same trick with the cafes of Paris, 1959.

Nouvelle Vague captures the moment when a band of outsiders - Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean Seberg - are improvising the casual, violent spree of À Bout de Souffle. It is an uncannily perfect cast: Zoey Deutch is luminous as the bewildered then seducedJean Seberg, Aubry Dullin is goofily gallant as Belmondo.

At the centre, conducting things like a ringmaster in Ray-Bans, is Guillaume Marbeck as Godard. He delivers epigrams and dictats like a guerilla leader, treating the camera like a weapon and deadlines as a chore. If this is now a cosy period drama rather than revolutionary cinema it’s nevertheless a gloriously enjoyable freewheel through the past.

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