Richard Linklater’s behind-the-scenes biopic spins us back to the moment 65 years ago when Jean-Luc Godard reshaped the grammar of film with Breathless. Yet, for all its carefully constructed illusions of time travel – right down to cue marks flickering in the corner of the frame every 20 minutes – Nouvelle Vague feels less like an homage to the past and more a questioning of the present. In an era when studios fine-tune narratives by algorithm and green screens give us vistas of a generic nowhere, what would it take to reinvent cinema today?

A still from Richard Linklater’s film Nouvelle Vague

Shot in lustrous, high-contrast black and white that channels the look and improvisatory soul of Breathless, the film removes us to the Paris of 1959 and the same cafés, metro stations, streets and hotel rooms where the New Wave’s leading lights smoked, argued and plotted their jailbreak from criticism into creation. Static portrait shots introduce the luminaries – Chabrol, Melville, Truffaut, Varda – played by actors who often resemble their real-life counterparts with eerie precision. Chief among them is newcomer Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, his sunglasses (permanently on)...