Nouvelle vague

One of those movies that you should watch twice in order to understand it better. Of course, one should love Poetry/Literature or Godard's movies, or else he/she may dislike it and find it pretentious. As another reviewer said, Godard is an acquired taste. You either love it or hate it. I love his movies and even myself have disliked some movies of his because i found them boring or meaningless.

New Wave is not that easy to watch : Characters recite all the time quotes from literary works. Most of those quotes are thoughtful and made me think a lot. But there are too many of them and i had to be 100% concentrated and even that, it was not enough. I paused the movie many times in order to perceive what the characters were saying. But it worths the trouble. This is a highly intelligent movie and i enjoyed it.

When I was younger, I used to feel jealousy towards people who clicked with stuff like this, but now I think I might pity them.

This film's Godard at his lamest and most frustrating. It's pretty much unwatchable. If I have to give him credit, I guess he could've made Nouvelle Vague longer. An 89-minute runtime might suggest some restraint, but it felt much longer.

Godard's a director whose well-known stuff I watched some time ago and kind of liked, but it only took a couple of deep cuts for me to get the sense his style was generally not for me. This is one I wanted to give a chance, because it's been years since I saw a Godard film and Alain Delon was in it, but I found it more insufferable than anything else by Godard I'd seen before.

Characters speak about nothing, every scene is tedious, everything feels meaningless, and if that's the point somehow I don't care and still don't like it. This just sucks.

Not one of my favorite Godard films - this 1990 entry, Novelle vague (New Wave, so to speak). While there were things about the film that left me un-fulfilled after repeat viewings, I probably can't recommend the film to someone who might, by the luck of the invisible film-geek Gods, find the tape in the video-store and only will watch it once. By the time I had my third viewing of this (the first two times I just couldn't get through to the end, maybe too tired, maybe just not in the mood for so much Godard going on), I respected it a little more than on my first viewing, though that's giving it some more credit than it should. Bottom line, folks, this is a hard-core, un-abashed art-film, where symbolism is turned up to eleven on the intellectual amp, images are put forth that do hold interest (and when I say that I mean sporadically) in the poetic, love nature over the man-made structure sense, and of course Alain Delon and Domiziana Giordano as the lead couple. Although Giordano is given some emotions to work with (and her start to the film, in which she accidentally runs over a hitchhiker on the road, should kick off something more interesting than it does), Delon mostly walks around with the same face, looking dour and un-happy until midway through the film, which I won't spoil. To put it another way, it makes his performance as the ultra low-key killer in Le Samourai look like Robert De Niro in Goodfellas.

To say that the film has no coherent plot is a give-away. If you're looking for the kinds of stories that kept Godard's new-wave films of the 60's, which were interspersed here and there with the philosophy and poetry he over-loads here, may be disappointed. In fact, the film almost achieves an ironic success in making the film far from the real purpose of the new-wave to start with. Godard gives us characters in this film, but some are left on the screen so briefly it's hard to comprehend what they're talking about. Some of the stuff on the corporations are interesting, as well are a few pivotal scenes to what story there is, but then it's gets downplayed by the mainly pretentious attitude. Maybe my biggest problem with the film is that Godard seems to be backing a viewer, not just myself but any particular viewer who'd seek this film out, into a corner- a part of me feels guilty for thinking a lot of the film just wasn't good because there was some good to it. The editing by Godard himself had a rhythm to it I kinda dug, the cinematography kept the colors vivid, and the choices in music were the typical, free-fancy Godard we know from the 60's.

But in all, and perhaps I can't put my finger on it, Novelle vague is just not my cup of tea. Maybe someday some hip, cool movie professor will give me another perspective on what I'm missing.

How do you film the air for a movie? May you find the past with the help of present, or look for the present through the past? Where are the elements of life (nature, love, thoughts...) in the image that reflects the screen? Is it possible to talk and work with a symbol you never used thirty years ago? And which are the signs of second chances?

Like Hemingway's 'Along the River and Beyond the Trees', 'Nouvelle vague' is a film about the feelings of a mid-aged man in his relation with himself after a car-crash in a Middle Europe road. Godard himself lives around the place, in a beautiful scenery close to nature. The filmmaker, since 'A bout de souffle', smelled the flavor of the countryside. 'Nouvelle vague' is a film for senses. You hear-a-heart beating along the trees.

Bien pour Godard, Lubtchansky, Delon...

Most people will not like this film. It's difficult to understand what's going on in the narrative. This isn't uncommon in Godard's work, but it's especially true of his later work. I've seen, besides New Wave, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary, and his segment from the omnibus opera film Aria. That segment is actually one of his best works as well. Sticking with the two other features, they are both interesting and beautiful but very slow films. New Wave seems a lot like them at first, especially in its confusing narrative (I had to read a synopsis on it to find out exactly what the plot was). It shares their beauty, but its even more pronounced. If I were advising someone on this film, I would tell them to disregard the narrative completely. Just watch it for its pictorial beauty. And its sound. Godard's experiments in sound have always been one of the most prominent traits of his cinema. It goes back at least to Une femme est une femme, way back in '62. This film contains the most interesting experiments in sound. The music is absolutely beautiful, and, like many of his other films, it stops abruptly, pops back up when you're not expecting it, and shifts volumes randomly. The sound effects are also quite beautiful. While New Wave was perhaps dull in its narrative (it's an examination of capitalism and consumerism), who cares? This is film. Film is a visual medium, and this is a visual masterpiece. Remember: RES, NON VERBA ("things, not words," an intertitle that appears frequently in the film). Oh, and Alain Delon, star of such great films as Rocco and His Brothers, stars. He's still a major stud! 9/10.