TIFTY TWOFERS: TIFF 2025 REVIEWS
Neither Blue Moon nor Nouvelle Vague is likely to be ranked among Linklater’s greatest works, such as the Before trilogy or Dazed and Confused; yet, he continues to establish his identity as an auteur-of-all-trades, always dabbling in new genres and styles that interest him without overthinking whether each new film is destined to be a career-defining masterpiece.
By Tamar Hanstke
On the first morning of attending my first-ever Toronto International Film Festival, I faced a dilemma: should I attend the press screening for Sentimental Value or the one for Blue Moon, the only press screenings scheduled for each film, both occurring on the same morning? My indecision was resolved when I realized the potential for a Richard Linklater double feature, featuring Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague, whose press screenings coincidentally played back-to-back in the same TIFF Lightbox auditorium. Beyond the obvious commonality of these two films sharing a director, there is a greater formal and narrative affinity between them: Specifically, the way each story has a destined conclusion that is already known to the audience from the start, allowing for meandering character studies that do not need to resolutely follow the biopic narrative formula—a rise in act 1, a fall in act 2, a new and matured rise in act 3—that has dampened the appeal of so many promising biopics in recent years. Linklater’s films can, instead, diverge into compelling character-driven tangents, because the very nature of the conclusion being foregone allows for a certain generosity in the audience for following threads that build our understanding of the characters rather than strictly developing the narrative. For my own part, I can say with certainty that I enjoyed my singular ventures into two distinct historical periods, gaining a greater understandings of two particularly singular artists.
Beginning with Blue Moon, the film’s one detriment is the rather puzzling choice to cast 5’10” Ethan Hawke as real-life composter Lorenz Hart, who was a visually distinctive 5 feet tall. A little reading into the film’s production reveals that the film employed a “height consultant” to help sell the illusion that Hawke is the 5’ tall Hart, including physical acting on Hawke’s part, as well as camera tricks to further visually distort Hawke’s real stature. While 5’ is a couple of inches taller than the official classification for dwarfism, given the general lack of opportunities in Hollywood for actors (particularly men) of shorter stature, I find it unfortunate that a greater effort was not made to cast a lesser-known, potentially marginalized actor in this part (after all, if someone ten inches taller than Hart is acceptable, why not someone several inches shorter?).
With those reservations aside, and to Hawke’s credit, he performs a similar feat of acting prowess that he routinely brings out for his collaborations with Linklater, largely disappearing into the larger-than-life persona of Hart. While I had no prior knowledge of Hart’s personal life, the film serves as an incisive and engaging character study, deftly defying several major tropes that are all too commonly employed in biopics of this style. For example, while Hart spends much of the film lovesick over his much younger ingénue Elizabeth Weiland, played by Margaret Qualley, he is also openly bisexual, offering Weiland an explanation of his fluid sexuality that is much more sensitive and nuanced than the vast majority of representations of bisexuality in mainstream film.
Qualley herself once again proves to be an up-and-coming actress to watch out for, holding her own in an extended series of monologues between Weiland and Hart as she eloquently retells her romantic exploits at college. There is an ambivalent dynamic between the two characters that cuts through the usual discomfort of a middle-aged man lusting over a precocious young woman, as he both desires her and also genuinely wants to be her mentor and confidante, encouraging her to share her anecdotes in the way of a close friend rather than a jealous, thwarted lover. Qualley, meanwhile, strikes an impressive balance between expressing genuine care for Hart and appreciation for his personal and professional mentorship, while also prioritizing her own career advancement above all else. It is these interpersonal complexities—not just between Hart and Weiland, but also between Hart and his former writing partner, Richard Rogers (played by Andrew Scott), as well as various other denizens of the bar where the entire single-setting film takes place—that allows this rather stagey film to remain vibrant and cinematic throughout, constantly introducing new character conflicts that keep the story moving at a brisk pace. While the film opens with Hart’s death six months after the single night depicted in the film, by the film’s conclusion, it is still hard to believe that such a vivacious personality will so soon meet its tragic end.
Nouvelle Vague, similarly, spends its entire runtime working towards a foregone conclusion: The completion of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, destined to alter the course of cinema history forever. In the tradition of films like Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, the film wisely adopts the black-and-white cinematography of the original film, allowing for a creative blurring of the lines between the visuals of the original film and this re-enactment. One of the related disadvantages of this film, however, is Linklater’s assumption of the audience’s familiarity with Godard and the many other key figures of the emerging French New Wave. While he does include on-screen text to name each new “character” that arrives on the scene, some of these introductions serve as rather hollow cameos, as in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance by Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda. Given that Godard’s inner social circle is quite small–in this film, namely comprised of Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, and Suzanne Schiffman–it is as though Linklater feels compelled to supplement this trio with a revolving door of easter egg appearances that, in fact, begin to beg the question of why Linklater chose such an insular perspective on the French New Wave rather than focusing on, for example, a more sprawling biopic about the many contributors to Cahiers du Cinéma.
This story is, like Blue Moon, not a conventional cinematic narrative, even when compared to other “filmmaking gone wrong” classics such as Day for Night or Living in Oblivion. Whereas those films tend to have a clearly defined, classically ‘auteur’ director character who tries in vain to hold the venture together while everyone and everything else slowly falls apart, in Breathless, it is the director whose unorthodox methods befuddle the increasingly impatient cast and crew. This leads to a rather predictable and cyclical quality to the film’s structure, as the filmmaking portion essentially functions as a series of vignettes in which Godard is habitually absent, late, and/or emotionally and intellectually impenetrable–and then, each time, his disorderly process results, almost as if by magic, in crafting one of the many iconic moments we recognize from the finished film.
My guess is that this repetition will hinder the future re-watch value of the film; however, I would go so far as to argue that this film’s greatest value is more educational than as pure art or entertainment. If trying to teach, for example, a high school or undergraduate introductory film course that includes a week on the French New Wave, the original Breathless is an increasingly tough ask of young students who are not accustomed either to black-and-white cinematography or the aimless narrative of early art films— yet, Nouvelle Vague offers the opportunity to teach the most important innovations of Breathless within a clear and engaging narrative structure. This is how I plan for Nouvelle Vague to live on as part of my own pedagogical toolbox, and for this, I am very grateful to Linklater.
All told, neither Blue Moon nor Nouvelle Vague is likely to be ranked among Linklater’s greatest works, such as the Before trilogy or Dazed and Confused; yet, he continues to establish his identity as an auteur-of-all-trades, always dabbling in new genres and styles that interest him without overthinking whether each new film is destined to be a career-defining masterpiece. I never quite know what I am going to get out of a new Linklater film, and this element of surprise made this double feature the perfect welcome to my first experience of TIFF.
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