The second Richard Linklater film this year had me worried. If you stumbled here from the perspective of a sighted person, good for you. I certainly miss not worrying about walking into a theater and thinking about accessibility, and I certainly miss the world view we get from international cinema. Nouvelle Vague is probably 95% in French. As DuoLingo reminds me, I’m not fluent in French.

the gods of random audio description assignment came through this year, and blessed me with a lovely track for this. Sadly, the bar was so low,a slug could have cleared it. Not only are we conditioned to believe we won’t be getting audio description, but when we do, quite frequently it isn’t human. or, it is human, but only one. Then you have the monotony of one voice doing all the description and reading of subtitles. If you’re game and can find the AD track to the Teacher’s Lounge, a German Oscar nominee distributed by Sony Pictures Classics from a few years ago, I recommend trying to follow that madness. One person. So to get a track at all feels like the first miracle, and then for it to be human, second. But when I start hearing multiple voices, we’re nearing the grand slam of international audio description. it shouldn’t be that way, but it is.

for up and coming blind filmmakers, they should have solid access to the initial works of international auteurs, not just their English language stuff. And certainly, it would be nice to have context to the French New Wave, and its various filmmakers. I wish I had seen more before losing my sight, but ironically, breathless is the only one I know I have seen. I don’t remember much of it, but it was part of my world cinema course during film school. So this is a lucky happenstance that Linklater chose this film, and not to make a film about another French New Wave director, or feature. I also wis Netflix had done us a solid and offered the original film for audiences, also with an AD track.

Linklater, in what I understand is black and white, tells the story of how Jean-Luc Godard, after witnessing the rapturous response to Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows at Caanes, seeks to make his own impact on film, which leads him to Breathless. Nouvelle Vague is about the making of Breathless, how Godard got his producer, his crew, his leading lady (played by Zoey Deutch, who does utter a bit of English), and actually shoot this film his way. Or at least as much of his way as possible, until people put their foot down about his finicky way of not shooting when the moment doesn’t feel right, stalling the production, and bleeding money.

Godard often employed tactics to capture realism that meant a lot of the “extras” as we would think of them, were real people just walking down the street, blissfully unaware they were about to be background in an iconic film. Nouvelle Vague is a wonderful story of a classic filmmaker making a legendary work, and those really interested in film will love Linklater’s take. personally, I prefer blue Moon, of his two films this year. After seeing Blue Moon, I knew for sure I’d be watching it again at some point, while Nouvelle Vague felt like a singular experience. I wasn’t sad I had this one time around, but not every film feels like it needs another viewing.

I can really only comment on Zoey’s performance, as the rest were translated to me through audio description. Not that the narrators working did a bad job, but it is hard to discuss the performance of Guillaurme Marcke, who plays Godard, and is the actual star of the film. I’ve heard he captures the essence, but I can’t personally speak to it.

Richard Linklater continues to be a chameleon in film, and as one of the more prominent filmmakers who skipped film school, his works inspire others to pick up a camera and shoot. but also, but Linklater tipping his hat to an even greater auteur that predates him, and possibly influenced his earlier works like Before Sunrise, he shows he understands his place in his medium, and what came before.

Nouvelle Vague will likely leave cinephiles breathless with its artistic interpretation of an iconic film and its legendary director, but for regular Netflix viewers wil be a quirky French film about actually realizing your dreams.

Fresh: Final Grade: 7.4/10