By Paul Salfen AMFM Magazine | November 5, 2025
In the dimly lit glow of Austin’s historic theaters—those same spaces plastered with faded posters of Truffaut and Godard—Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague bursts onto the screen like a stolen kiss from cinema’s rebellious past. A playful, poignant love letter to cinema, this film reimagines the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless in an exuberant exploration of the youthful rebellion and creative chaos that shaped the French New Wave. At its heart are Zoey Deutch as the iconic Jean Seberg and newcomer Aubry Dullin stepping into the shoes of Jean-Paul Belmondo, capturing the electric tension of on-set romance amid the era’s seismic creative shifts.
Fresh off the film’s Austin premiere, Deutch and Dullin sat down with AMFM Magazine to reflect on slipping into 1960s Paris, the thrill of seeing their labor of love projected large, and the timeless advice baked into Linklater’s ode to authenticity. The energy was palpable: Deutch, ever the poised storyteller, radiated pride, while Dullin—whose whirlwind journey from a Paris theater school to Linklater’s set still feels like a dream—brought a wide-eyed wonder that mirrored his character’s freewheeling charm.
“It’s unbelievable for me,” Dullin confessed, his accent threading through the words like a Godard voiceover. Just four months after training in a Parisian school theater, he found himself on set with Linklater, the indie auteur whose films have long championed unfiltered human connection. “Now I’m here. Every time I see the movie on the big screen, I’m like, ‘Wow, we did a great thing,’ and I’m proud of it.” Deutch echoed the sentiment, her eyes lighting up as she recalled the premiere. “When you see this on the big screen… you get to see the vision that there was forever for you. You must be so proud to be a part of this, right? It was particularly cool to get to come to Austin and be in that space, in that theater again.”
For Deutch, the return to Austin held layers of meta-magic. Linklater’s own theater there—adorned with Breathless stills, St. Joan posters, and a mosaic of French New Wave relics—felt like a living scrapbook. “It felt like I was watching the making of Rick being inspired to make this movie,” she laughed. “It’s so cool to be in his space and then be a part of sharing it with his community.” The film, shot in a breezy, improvisational style true to Linklater’s ethos, doesn’t just homage Godard; it resurrects the era’s DIY spirit, where low budgets and raw passion birthed revolution.
At its core, Nouvelle Vague pulses with a manifesto for creators: Make the movie you want, not the one others demand. Deutch distilled the film’s ethos with effortless clarity. “The spirit of this movie is… to make the movie that you want to make, that not other people want you to make, or do it your way. You don’t need a big budget or to make it in a conventional way. The film is about authenticity and about being true to you. I think that’s a really beautiful, worthy message.” Dullin, drawing from his own outsider’s leap, added a poetic nudge: “Feeling free to be yourself. Yeah. Like, don’t be like the other. We all have single things, and we have to use it to do like single movies or other things. Just be yourself and it’s going to be okay.”
It’s advice that doubles as a lifeline for aspiring filmmakers—and actors—navigating today’s algorithm-driven industry. The movie brims with such nuggets, wrapped in scenes of flirtatious banter, stolen cigarettes, and the kind of chaotic creativity that turned Breathless into a cultural earthquake. But how do you bottle that lightning? For Deutch and Dullin, it started with immersion, a full-body plunge into a world of berets, chain-smoking, and a French that felt plucked from vinyl records.
“Well, that’s our jobs,” Deutch quipped when asked about mindset shifts—different era, outfits, country, the works. “Like, you just asked us to describe acting. So yes, unfortunately.” Laughter rippled through the room, but her process was anything but casual. Not a word of French in her vocabulary two years prior, Deutch committed to language lessons that became her portal to Seberg. “The biggest piece of this puzzle for me was the French aspect, and learning a new language… I began that journey about two years before making this movie.” Research followed: endless loops of Seberg’s films, videos, and, of course, Breathless itself. “There was a lot of watching her old films and videos that I could find, and obsessively watching Breathless.”
Dullin, a native speaker, found unexpected poetry in the dialect. “What’s funny, I think that the French language for us to weather was the way to go back in the 60s, because it’s really not the same French as right now.” The production’s details sealed the time warp: period costumes that restricted and reshaped movement, vintage cars rumbling like distant thunder, even extras curated to evoke the era’s bohemian haze. “The French language, the costumes, the cars, everything… brought us back in the 60s and into the state of mind of all of our characters.”
Deutch leaned into the tactile: “Even like the shoes, the underwear, the way you move—it makes you move in the world differently. Everything. The smoking weirdly helped really feel like you were of a certain time. Of course, because we don’t smoke indoors.” She paused, grinning at the prop’s dual role. “It’s funny having something in your hand, you know, as an actor—immediately, like, grounds you into something more real. And that was helpful for me because [Seberg] is a much more still person than I am, and she doesn’t use her hands like I do. So having something in my hand was like, really great.”
As the conversation wound down—promises of future chats lingering like cigarette smoke—Nouvelle Vague emerged not just as a film, but a spark. It’s a reminder that cinema’s greatest rebellions are born from vulnerability, from diving (yes, actors do love that word) headfirst into the unknown. Linklater, Deutch, and Dullin have crafted a love letter that’s as exuberant as a Paris sidewalk café flirtation and as poignant as a final fade to black. Catch it on the big screen, where the posters whisper secrets and the reels still hum with possibility. The New Wave isn’t dead—it’s just getting a fresh, breathless reboot.
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