Director Richard Linklater with Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin

I did my homework: I rewatched À Bout De Souffle the previous night. I was too old when I first saw it to be bewitched by its youthfulness and spontaneity and too used to the techniques/approach that it pioneered; this time I was more aware of the circumstances of its creation and more sympathetic to the sense that Godard was trying to capture. Perhaps, too, I am now old enough to appreciate the actors’ youthfulness – particularly Belmondo’s athletic grace and the close-ups of Seberg’s angelic face. This time, too, I wondered about an anti-American angle: the Bogart vibe and the betrayal by an American woman of a good old purse-rifling, car-thieving, police-killing French gangster.

Anyway, Nouvelle Vague is a film about the making of À Bout De Souffle, and it was wholly successful in making me interested in it again. It’s an amusing, engaging, clever homage with brilliant performances/impersonations. It was strange to see Belmondo portrayed as an easy-going young man, since the character he plays in the film is so impatient and hectoring, subconsciously aware that his days are numbered. Marbeck was great as the epigram-heavy, and devious Godard. Mercifully, Linklater’s film avoided the jump cuts and stilted wordiness of Godard’s film; it was the epitome of a stylish, tasteful well-made film that was the opposite of Godard.