Nouvelle Vague

Release date: 30 January 2026 (UK)

Director: Richard Linklater

Starring: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin

Cinematography: David Chambille

Distributed by: Netflix, ARP Sélection

Producers: Michèle Pétin, Laurent Pétin

Running time: 1h 46m

Someone, somewhere, has the job of selecting which of the week’s many releases should be chosen to be programmed on a Tuesday morning at my local cinema, for the purposes of parents/carers to sit in a nice comfy darkish room and enjoy a little bit of culture whilst tending to the chaotic needs of a baby. I assume it’s one person. Perhaps there’s a baby cinema committee, who carefully discuss the merits of each option before curating a programme expertly tailored towards the needs of (mainly, let’s face it) exhausted mothers.

It’s not easy. People have a wide variety of tastes and interests. Some people were probably fine with Wicked showing two weeks in a row. Some people might inexplicably have enjoyed F1. But I am willing to bet that no one, anywhere (except obviously French speakers) received the news that this week’s choice would be in French with English subtitles, with anything other than a sinking feeling of disappointment and confusion.

It’s in Very Serious black and white

This might be a great film. I’m afraid I cannot tell you, because it is impossible to follow dialogue via text whilst baby wrangling. This is madness, madness! It appeared to be a film about the making of a film, and a 1 hour 45 minute long in joke about the dawn of French New Wave cinema, a topic I know possibly even less about than the musical stylings of Neil Diamond. I suspect, even if you could follow the subtitles, you might have found it less than interesting if you don’t have an interest in French New Wave cinema.

Not sure what else to say really - there’s a scene with a 2CV which I enjoyed. My family had a 2CV when I was little, which I approached in much the same way as if we’d had our own fairground ride in the back garden. Oooh, your car has a panoramic sunroof? Big deal, mine features a roof made of canvas which you can roll back and drive around like the roof of your car got ripped off in an accident! I’m told you can now pay to be driven around Paris in a 2CV as a tourist experience so we were just very ahead of the curve really.

The 2CV!

The 2CV scene was fun - the dude playing the dude playing the main guy in the film ran along a road whilst the film camera followed him from the roof of the 2CV and he shouted ‘don’t worry, it’s for a film!’ to concerned passers by as he mimicked slowly dying. I liked that bit. The director, real life film person Jean Lucy Godard, was a real dick, and spent a lot of time quoting various men talking pretentiously about art. Perhaps this was done ironically and he was meant to come across as a dick? At this point, after so, so many baby cinema films about men and their doings, it’s quite hard to tell. Is this film a searing critique of the people who originated French New Wave Cinema? I don’t know, but if it isn’t, they all came across quite badly.

It’s hard not to start feeling quite rageful about the State of Things when you see a film a week for 6 months or so, and realise how very, very male it all is on a new level. In the same way as it’s hard not to feel quite rageful about the whole baby business, and the absolute yawning inequality at the heart of it. Some of it, yes, biological, but there’s also a real sense you get from the world at large of ‘look at the silly women doing their silly baby things’ when you, yourself, feel like you’re putting in some quite serious graft. On paper, yes, we’re sitting in a cinema with some cake, but underneath all of that there’s some extremely intense paddling going on. And watching a bunch of guys taking themselves and their cinematic exploits extremely seriously whilst asking their female colleagues to walk to work so they seem suitably exhausted and drape themselves artistically over bedsheets is just a bit, well, not the vibe.

So there you have it. We watched some people moving on a screen, and possibly picked up a few words like ‘oui’ and ‘vin rouge.’ On to the next one!

Good things: The 2CV!

Bad things: Guys, it was entirely in French!

My review: quoi?

Lily’s review: pas de caca

Next week: Oh for god’s sake, Hamlet