"Torn from a reviewer's notepad: Walking out of Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague, we couldn't get a certain crazy retro-pop ditty out of our heads. In Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough's 1966 song "I'm Hip," unforgettably covered by cocktail-lounge chantoozie Blossom Dearie, the singer mock-complains about the latest, coolest thing from Paris: "Every Saturday night/With my suit buttoned tight and my suedes on/I'm gettin' my kicks/Watchin' arty French flicks with my shades on." They were talking about Jean-Luc Godard, of course."
"Linklater must have been just about the last hipster to flip out over Franco-Swiss import Godard: his unshaven rodent-like face, his sexy starlet girlfriends (clock Danish model Anna Karina), his wholehearted love of classic big-studio Hollywood, the avant-garde design of his titles, etc. But most of all the zany exuberance of his movies, suddenly popping in and out of art houses like a cigarette machine loaded with Gauloises-in those zany, exuberant days before students everywhere began worrying about Vietnam."
Nouvelle Vague is a dramatized, somewhat fictionalized tribute to Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless). The 1960 release inspired a worldwide vogue for brash, stylish films that became known as the French New Wave. Linklater encountered Godard's daring debut years later and incorporated many of Godard's traits into the tribute. The film foregrounds Godard's unshaven look, glamorous starlets, love of classic Hollywood, and avant-garde title design. The movie aims to recreate the zany exuberance and pop-cultural energy of pre-Vietnam art-house cinema while wearing its admiration for Godard proudly.
Read at Metro Silicon Valley | Silicon Valley's Leading Weekly
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