Zoey Deutch – Movie Musings

Endearing, hugely enjoyable, vibrant look at the French New Wave which almost feels like a documentary

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Guillaume Marbeck (Jean-Luc Godard), Zoey Deutch (Jean Seberg), Aubry Dullin (Jean-Paul Belmondo), Bruno Dreyfürst (Georges de Beauregard), Benjamin Clery (Pierre Rissient), Matthieu Penchinat (Raoul Coutard), Pauline Belle (Suzon Faye), Blaise Pettebone (Marc Pierret), Benoît Bouthors (Claude Beausoleil), Paolo Luka Noé (François Moreuil), Adrien Rouyard (François Truffaut), Jade Phan-Gia (Phuong Maittret)

If ever a film was made for film lovers, it might just be Nouvelle Vague. It’s certainly made by film lovers. You can feel Richard Linklater’s adoration for French New Wave cinema drip off the screen. Nouvelle Vague covers the making of A bout de Souffle in such lovingly researched depth and detail it effectively serves as a sort of making-of-film that was never made. The recreation of the time and era and sequences of the film is absolutely spot on. If you’ve ever watched A Bout des Souffle, you will find something here to delight you and make you want to rush out and watch it once again.

Of course, if you are not immersed (or at least vaguely familiar) with the workings of the burst of creativity that sprang from Cahiers de Cinema in the late 1950s and gave fresh life to an entire generation of French filmmaking, then Nouvelle Vague might be a bit impenetrable. For those not in the know, a host of film-loving French writers (all of whom dreamed of making films) created a monthly magazine awash with fascinatingly in-depth filmic analysis, reclaiming directors like Hitchcock, Welles and Ford as major artists and treating cinema as a serious art form.

Its natural then, that Nouvelle Vague is in love with the art of film-making and the often confused and meandering path a film takes to reach the screen. Few could be more meandering than Jean-Luc Godard (brilliantly recreated, in all his studied cool and casual intellectualism, by Guillaume Marbeck), whose style on A Bout de Souffle was to provide the barest shape of each scene and try to capture reality and truth – to see its lead actors, Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin) and American star Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) react naturally and in the moment in a host of real-life locations.

Nouvelle Vague dives into this with huge enthusiasm and manages to wear its history lesson nature lightly. That’s because Linklater’s film is spy and nimble enough not to wear us down with facts and potted biographies: the dialogue is refreshingly free of people summarising each other’s careers and inspirations. Perhaps Linklater worked out that the film buffs watching – and God, that’s surely most of the audience – are going to know who Truffaut, Rossellini, Bresson, Chabrol, Varda, Resnais et al are already and any newbies can work it out from context. He finds a neat middle ground with each character – and Nouvelle Vague works in practically a who’s-who of French filmic landmark contributors into its slim 90-minute run-time – introduced with a shot of them starring at the camera, their names appearing in caption beneath them.

This tees Linklater up nicely for a wonderful companion piece to Me and Orson Welles: an engrossing look at how a landmark piece of narrative art is created. Nouvelle Vague might have the edge though, because it doesn’t need to introduce any fiction to the story. Instead in its tight focus on the twenty-day shooting schedule for Godard’s first film (shot on the cheap, from a script by friend and rival Truffaut) it finds there is more than enough drama to be had from showing us how making the film went down.

These tensions largely revolve around Godard himself, whose unconventional, vibes-based directing style (he’s as likely to spent a day playing pinball as actually organising a shot) rubs up against his producer de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst), rightly irritated at waste of time and money, while his improvisatory style irritates Jean Seberg (a pitch perfect embodiment by Zoey Deutsch), who wants a clearer script and story. What she doesn’t want is Godard providing her gnomic, cryptic direction, off-camera, between every line she invents in the moment (working to notes, scribbled by Godard that morning), however much she respects Godard’s freshness and spontaneity.

But the most delightful thing about Nouvelle Vague is that, despite the gripes, disagreements and arguments over an intense period of collaboration, it’s also soaked in the love and excitement that comes out of a joint creative endeavour. There are many moments of satisfied, mutual excitement and satisfaction at a job well-done in Nouvelle Vague, and a gloriously warm sense of the respect and support in the French film industry at the time. Linklater’s film is charming, warm and funny when it simply stops and lets us spend time hanging with these people, making a movie that they have a good feeling about (and that we know will become a landmark).

It’s matched by the breathtaking, recreative detail that unpacks how several scenes were captured on camera (they seem to have located every original location!). Godard’s decision to record no sound on set meant the film could be recorded by a shaky, but light, camera that could bob and weave among unknowing Parisian extras, following its characters spontaneous reactions. It’s huge fun to watch Godard sit his cameraman in a wheeled box (to hide him) or see Belmondo (his back to the camera) shout smilingly at passers-by that they are just recording a movie. Linklater lovingly captures how the freshness of scenes, such as Belmondo and Seberg lying in a bedsit, riffing on Bogart films, came about.

Linklater also doesn’t overplay the success of the film – its release and impact is largely told in a few closing captions – and it doesn’t shirk on showing that, for all his genius, Godard could be a difficult and self-important man. Several Godard epigrams are worked into the dialogue, enough for you either to be wowed by his intellect or roll your eyes at his pretension (according to your taste). Instead, he allows the film to focus on the cathartic joy from artistic creation, the camera capturing moments of genuine novelty that would become part of cinematic history in their freshness and vibrancy.

It makes for a genuinely very enjoyable film, with enough energy and joy in it to appeal even to those who have never heard of Godard. And, I must confess, I got another slight jolt of comedy from it by reflecting that if he had ever seen this film, Godard would probably have thought it was nostalgic, soft-soap rubbish.

Theatrical, twisty-and-turn filled thriller, with a very fine leading performance

Director: Graham Moore

Cast: Mark Rylance (Leonard Burling), Johnny Flynn (Francis), Zoey Deutch (Mable Shaun), Dylan O’Brien (Richie Boyle), Simon Russell Beale (Roy Boyle), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Violet LaFontaine), Alan Meddizadeh (Monk)

In the 1950s “English” Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) has fled haunting loss at home to Chicago. A veteran of Savile Row, Leonard is a “cutter” (definitely not a tailor – that’s any fool with a needle and thread) who crafts tailor-made suits for the wealthy. But in Chicago, the wealthiest clients are also the most dangerous: the Boyle family, an Irish mob run by Roy (Simon Russell Beale) whose impulsive son Richie (Dylan O’Brien) hopes to succeed him – as does Roy’s enforcer Francis (Johnny Flynn). The Roys use Leonard’s tailor shop as a dead drop – Leonard scrupulously doesn’t want to know – and Richie is secretly dating Leonard’s shop assistant Mable (Zoey Deutch), who Leonard sees as a surrogate daughter. But, when the Roys discover they have a rat in their turf war with the LaFontaine gang, Leonard’s shop becomes the setting for one long night of cross and counter-cross, where Leonard will need to all his wits to survive.

The Outfit’s title has a double meaning – referring both to the obvious and the Capone-founded crime syndicate the Roy’s dream of joining – and that dual nature is a pointer to the film as a chamber piece where almost nothing or anyone is exactly as it seems. With all its action taking place within the confines of Leonard’s shop it means The Outfit best resembles a decent play. Certainly, it has a theatrical love for its tricksy structure of move and counter-move (perhaps a little too much) and gives rich, chewy dialogue relished by its cast of experienced theatre performers.

At its heart is a very fine performance of Mark Rylance. Few actors can more skilfully suggest deeper depths, below a softly spoken, quiet exterior. Leonard appears to be a mild-mannered, obsessive crafter of suits, slightly lonely who wouldn’t say boo to a goose or take even a moment to involve himself in anything beyond his shears (and you bet those are going to come into play at some point). He’s fastidious and exact – reflecting a craft where every cut must be made to perfection. Rylance perfectly captures the fastidious timidity of a humble, unquestioning man, cowed by his interaction with blow-hard, trigger-happy gangsters.

But he also subtly implies at every moment there is more to Leonard than first appears. With his gentleness and genuine concern for the well-being of Mable – excellently portrayed by Zoey Deutch as a head-strong, kind young woman making impulsive, reckless decisions while dreaming of an exciting future – it’s a surprise that when guns start appearing he’s fairly calm. Despite protests, when asked to sew up a gunshot wound he doesn’t even flinch. When bodies start to pile-up, he’s able to suggest courses of action without any trace of doubt.

Slowly we realise Leonard is thinking fast on his feet to get him – and Mable – out of a lethal situation. That he is a far more shrewd, resourceful survivor than we first thought. While fearing the dangers of the gangsters he interacts with, they don’t terrify him into inaction. We start to notice he can lie with ease, string out a yarn and think on his feet. That years of judging what clothes will fit a man have made a swift and accurate observer of details and human nature.

Rylance is able to convey all this with an assured skill. In many ways the most compelling thing about The Outfit is watching this consummate actor slowly reveal various cards in his hand, brilliantly balancing the quiet, shy persona with shrewd cunning. It’s also a brilliant camouflage for people to underestimate him – which of course they do – but Rylance also manages to lull the audience into constantly underestimating him as well.

It’s the gangsters who end up looking slightly out-of-the-depth. Ritchie Boyle – who Leonard timidly calls “Master Ritchie” throughout, like he was the scion of a lord of the manor – is a young-man desperate to prove his worth, but hopelessly incompetent and over-confident in his skill as a rough-and-tough man of the street. The real threat emerges as enforcer Francis (played with a sullen sharpness by Johnny Flynn), a born survivor with a ruthless streak a mile wide. Simon Russell Beale is slightly odd casting as a tough Irish gangster (I never quite buy it), but he and Rylance spark off each other brilliantly and Beale gets a great sense of sociopathic lèse-majesté about this crime boss who likes to see himself as a benevolent community improver but is in-fact a ruthless killer.

The Outfit offers an array of twists and turns – and more than a few shocks – and Graham Moore’s direction of his own script keeps up the tense atmosphere in its tight theatrical setting. There is more than enough mystery in exactly how events will turn out and there is enough doubt in the viewer about who is coming out of this alive. It’s final act, however, tips events a little too far – and certainly offers one reveal too many, that comes a little too much of the blue and gilds the lily too much as well as (for me) slightly undermining some of the character work the film works hard to do, as if Moore was trying a little too hard to top what’s come before. But before then this is an engaging theatrical plot-boiler, powered by an excellent Mark Rylance performance.