Last updated on June 9, 2025
A film by Richard Linklater
With: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin, Alix Bénézech, Paolo Luka Noé, Tom Novembre, Jade Phan-Gia, Nicolas Dozol, Jean-Jacques Le Vessier, Bruno Dreyfürst
This is the story of Godard making ”Breathless”, told in the style and spirit in which Godard made “Breathless”.
Our rate: ***
For the 25th film by the prolific Richard Linklater, who is presenting two films this year, one in competition at the Berlinale and the second in competition at Cannes, we expected a snobbish, bland, and uninteresting story, but the film turns out to be particularly precise and accurate, well-paced (especially at the beginning), full of interesting details, and convincing overall. The film’s greatest asset is its lead actor, Guillaume Marbeck, who not only gives a fine performance and seems very credible in his role (just compare him with Louis Garrel in the pitiful Redoubtable ), but also bears such a striking resemblance to the late filmmaker (voice, face, gestures) is so striking that he can be considered Jean-Luc Godard’s official doppelgänger (quite the opposite of the actors who play Belmondo and Jean Seberg). The film’s second major strength is the balance between serious and comical tones, subtly created as the situations unfold. The film starts well, introducing one by one all the major personalities and actors of the New Wave at the time (Godard’s very strong personality remains central), but when the shooting of Breathless begins in earnest, it gets a little bogged down, notably due to the lack of consistency among the actors and the repetitive quality of the scenes.
In the end, Linklater succeeds in creating an accurate and charming portrait of an ambitious young filmmaker at the beginning of his career, adding small personal touches and showing us, with an almost documentary-like approach, the different stages of the making of one of the cornerstone films of the French New Wave.
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