If a movie released in recent times isn’t a mega-budget thrill ride derived from an action, science fiction, or fantasy franchise, it might be an adaptation of a best-selling young-adult romance novel. But more often, it’s something inspired by historical events and real people. Reality-based films may even outnumber purely fictional ones reaching theaters lately, although those movies telling true stories generally include a disclaimer in the end credits noting that certain characters, situations, and dialogue may have been altered for dramatic effect.
Two filmmakers of note who endeavored to preserve significant moments from the past in their latest projects didn’t adhere to any particular formula and didn’t bend the facts too far. As a result, they delivered fascinating and unconventional evocations of the personalities and eras they chose to conjure. Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague is about the early days of the French New Wave film movement, focusing on maverick director Jean-Luc Godard’s guerrilla shoot of the influential 1960 feature Breathless in and around Paris. The transcript of a dryly witty, name-drop-laden mid-1970s conversation between gay, scene-making New York City photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz was unearthed by Ira Sachs to serve as the basis for Peter Hujar’s Day. Neither would be characterized as a run-of-the-mill biopic or standard-issue docudrama.
‘Nouvelle Vague’
Nouvelle Vague is a look at the rise of the New Wave movement that emerged in France during the late 1950s, as a new generation of filmmakers embraced visual and structural experimentation and social commentary in rebellion against traditional narrative techniques. Austin, Tex.-bred director and screenwriter Richard Linklater decided to examine this watershed period in the motion picture arts with Nouvelle Vague by recreating the helter-skelter conception, casting, and filming of Breathless — Jean-Luc Godard’s directorial debut. A streetwise mélange of crime, doomed romance, and beatnik chic made on a shoestring, Breathless paired the rising, tough-guy actor Jean-Paul Belmondo with the fresh-faced American ingénue Jean Seberg as star-crossed lovers. It was a breakthrough for Godard and would be followed by a series of his acknowledged classics, such as Contempt, Band of Outsiders, and Alphaville, that would bring international attention and acclaim to the New Wave and its progenitors.
Nouvelle Vague is a joyous, breezy look at history in the making.
Linklater clearly feels a kinship with the founders and the ethos of the New Wave, having begun his prolific career in a raucous do-it-yourself manner with the 1993 indie coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused. He has since refused to be pigeonholed, going on to make the romantic Before trilogy movie series; the Oscar-winning cinema verité-style family drama Boyhood; the boisterous musical spree School of Rock; the cheeky escapade Hit Man, about an actual undercover police operative; and Blue Moon, a biographical vignette concerning the struggles and personal demons of the great Broadway songwriter Lorenz Hart. In addition to being Linklater’s cinematic love letter to Breathless and the New Wave movement, Nouvelle Vague introduces many of Godard’s peers from the influential “Cahiers du cinéma” film studies group, students of the medium who would go on to revolutionize the creation and nature of movies. These legends include François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Agnès Varda, and Éric Rohmer, and those who influenced them, such as Jean Cocteau.
The casting is downright uncanny. Many of the significant figures depicted in the film look so much like their real-life counterparts that it’s as if they were plucked out of the time stream. Guillaume Marbeck, who plays Godard, personifies the man’s passion, drive, and mischievous side; and Aubry Dullin is a veritable doppelganger of ex-amateur boxer Belmondo, exuding rough charm and playfulness. The sole American actor in the cast is Zoey Deutch, having previously worked with Linklater on the exuberant, underrated 2016 collegiate rom-com Everybody Wants Some!! Deutch is spot-on as the winsome, pixie-like Seberg whose filmography included memorable arthouse hits Bonjour Tristesse, Saint Joan, and A Fine Madness. Meanwhile, Linklater and his crew do such a phenomenal job of reproducing the settings, clothes, black-and-white film grain, and aspect ratio of the era (and of scenes from Breathless) that Nouvelle Vague appears to have actually been shot in 1960.
For a cinephile, Nouvelle Vague is a joyous, breezy look at history in the making. It’s a genuine treat to witness a close-up and personal approximation of Godard’s then-novel approach to shooting a feature film. Consider it a welcome addition to Linklater’s eclectic catalog, suffused with his humor and reverence for the movie-making process.
Nouvelle Vague is currently in select theaters and will be available for streaming on Netflix Friday, Nov. 14.
‘Peter Hujar’s Day’
Coming in at a tidy 76 minutes and sticking to one location, Peter Hujar’s Day is a little movie but a masterful one from writer-director Ira Sachs (Passages, Love Is Strange), who benefits from the presence of superb actors — Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall — in the only roles that this reproduction of an actual 1974 conversation requires: Whishaw as renowned queer photojournalist Peter Hujar and Hall as his friend Linda Rosenkrantz who wrote a book about their day-long chat that moved Sachs to turn it into a film. The confidantes hang out at Rosenkrantz’s Manhattan apartment, where they sip and spill the tea about their hip contemporaries as a small tape recorder captures their discussion. Hujar recounts what is probably a typical day for him in the neighborhood, interacting with the iconic likes of poet Allen Ginsberg, author William Burroughs, and critic-essayist Susan Sontag when on assignment or on the make.
Peter Hujar’s Day is a downtown art-scene cousin to the intimate feat that was Louis Malle’s 1981 film My Dinner with Andre, with theater and film stalwarts André Gregory and Wallace Shawn speaking to one another in the chic, now-shuttered restaurant Café des Artistes. Over the course of Peter Hujar’s Day, we experience intellectual repartee, delicate moments of revelation, and the warmth of a friendship in progress. It’s also a snapshot of a time and place that still resonates today. The subtlety and the seeming spontaneity of the interactions between Hujar and Rosenkrantz are so expertly realized by Whishaw and Hall that Peter Hujar’s Day truly feels like the coolest opportunity to eavesdrop imaginable.
Peter Hujar’s Day is currently in select theaters.