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Tamera Jones
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Steven Weintraub
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Summary
- Collider's Steve Weintraub talks with Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin for Netflix's Nouvelle Vague.
- Deutch discusses reuniting with Richard Linklater and how the experience changed filmmaking for her forever.
- The pair also discuss Dullin's audition and how they perfected one of the most iconic scenes from Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.
Over a decade ago, on the set of Everybody Wants Some!!, Oscar-nominated writer-director Richard Linklater asked Zoey Deutch if she would be interested in playing actress Jean Seberg in a dream project of his. "True to his word," when the filmmaker finally set out to make Nouvelle Vague, the recreation of Jean-Luc Godard's production of Breathless, the two reunited to set course for Paris, France, and find the rest of their French New Wave pioneers.
In the movie, Linklater and the crew recaptured the experimental, guerrilla-style filmmaking of then-first-time director Godard's (played in the movie by Guillaume Marbeck) whirlwind production of 1959's Breathless. Remaining faithful to the hangout genre aspect of Linklater's work, Nouvelle Vague explores the chaotic and joyful genius of a young man who would go on to change cinema forever.
In this conversation with Collider's Steve Weintraub, Deutch and Aubry Dullin, who plays Seberg's Breathless co-star Jean-Paul Belmondo, give us a glimpse behind the scenes working with Linklater on rehearsals and how much time was spent dissecting and restructuring iconic scenes. They discuss how working on a movie as freeing as this one was leagues different than most studio productions today, and Dullin shares how he auditioned for his on-screen debut.
'Nouvelle Vague' Was a Joyful, Fantastical Experience
"I definitely feel changed from making this movie."
COLLIDER: This is one of my favorite films of the year. I love this movie so much. One of the things that I find so interesting in the press notes is it says the film is the story of Godard making Breathless, told in the style and spirit in which he made the film. I'm just curious how Linklater and you guys put that into effect before stepping on set and while you were on set to try to inhabit the way he did it?
ZOEY DEUTCH: Well, I think that may be referencing more the visual style. The methodology was very, very different from how Godard did it. Obviously, you can't make a period film off the cuff. There's a lot of meticulous detail that goes into play to recreate, including special effects, which they did not have. But I think the spirit and the joy of making a first film, oddly, we felt while making our movie. Obviously, this was not Rick's first film in his decades of directing, but everyone was so energized and inspired, and wanted to make something very special for their own personal reasons. Everyone had a relationship to this time and these artists, and a deep motivation to make this movie really work and feel special. So, that was similar, but Rick does just as much rehearsal time as he does shooting, so that's very different.
Patricia (Jean Seberg played by Zoey Deutch) twirls in the Fontaine des Mers in Breathelss.Image via Netflix
That explains a lot about him because I think he's an amazing filmmaker. One of the things about Breathless is that when they were making the film, nobody had any idea the impact the film would have, and now it's influenced so many filmmakers and people for generations. For both of you, how has making this film possibly changed you or inspired you?
AUBRY DULLIN: That's a good question. For me, I discovered a way of working with Zoey and Rick because we did a lot of rehearsal, and I didn't do that before. So, I think it will change the way I work on my casting and in other movies. I think this is a huge part of how it will change me in this industry.
DEUTCH: I definitely feel changed from making this movie. I’ve got to be honest with you, it was like the fantasy version of being an actress that you imagine being an actress is going to be like, and it isn’t. I've been doing it for, like, 17 years, and I've never, from top to tail, been like… I'm just counting my blessings, really. I’m so goddarn lucky that Rick was true to his word. He mentioned that he wanted me to play Jean 11 years ago when we worked together on Everybody Wants Some!!, and the fact that he ended up actually casting me and I got this opportunity and I got to learn French and play this incredible woman and meet these amazing people and shoot in Paris and make a movie about the making of it, and then go to Cannes, all of it just felt so magical. I feel very changed. Just deep gratitude for it and the whole experience. I don't have, like, a finite, just the whole thing.
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Posts By Hannah Hunt Sep 14, 2025'Breathless' Most Iconic Scene Took an Entire Day to Get Right
"New York Herald Tribune!"
Aubry Dullin and Zoey Deutch as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Nouvelle VagueImage via Netflix
One of the big scenes of Breathless is the Herald Tribune scene where you're walking on the street, and you had to recreate that. I just have to talk about you practicing saying "Herald Tribune," trying to get it right, and also filming that sequence because it's a one-for-one in terms of Breathless and in this.
DEUTCH: [To Dullin] You probably thought I was so insane, meeting me. I'm annoying, for sure. There's an attic in the production office, and there's a little TV, and we spent a full day watching that scene and timing out the choreography of it and reversing it, obviously, because we were shooting the other side of it for our movie, and also filling in the gaps of what they could have been saying. But we only had a certain amount of time: four seconds to say this line, three seconds. So, it became this dance of total recreation, but then also interpretation. The physicality had to be exact, but the emotion and the words that we were creating, we were imagining. We spent at least a full day and then a lot of practice after that, and then on the day looking and being like, “Well, she could be on this corner.” I loved it.
DULLIN: Yeah, me too. I remember one day we were in the little room in the production office, and we were watching this sequence, and we put it on mute. We were like, “Okay, we have to say all these words in this timing.” So we were like, “Do we have to put away some words? Do we have to put in some new words?”
DEUTCH: We had to restructure the scene.
DULLIN: Yeah. It was really like a choreography. It was amazing to do this sequence.
DEUTCH: That was fun. There's a making of our movie, actually. Pretty meta. There's a wonderful French artist, Lucy. She was with us the whole shoot, and she made about a 30-minute movie about the making of our movie, and you see a lot of little clips from the production office. Then also, you don't want to see marks on the ground, and it was a wide shot, so because I had to be exact, I put sticks down or leaves down on the ground so I knew exactly where to go, and you see our process with that from the making-of video. She did a cool job making it.
Nouvelle VagueImage via ARP Selection
Aubry, this is your first big role. When you went in to audition, did you have any inkling that you might actually get the role? What has this process been like for you?
DULLIN: I saw a post on Facebook. It was saying, “We're looking for people looking like Belmondo,” and back in the day, when I was 16, an old guy told me, “You look like a young Belmondo.” So I was like, “I'm going to try it, but I'm not sure. It's Linklater. There are a lot of great actors in France who can do these parts.” So I went there just being me, and I tried not to be very stressed. And then I think I have some similarities with Belmondo that helped me, I guess, and that's how I'm here in front of you.
Nouvelle Vague is now available to stream on Netflix.
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Nouvelle Vague
Like Follow Followed Comedy Drama History Release Date October 31, 2025 Runtime 105 Minutes Director Richard Linklater Writers Holly Gent, Laetitia Masson, Michèle Pétin, Vincent Palmo Jr. Producers Laurent PétinCast
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Guillaume Marbeck
Jean-Luc Godard
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Zoey Deutch
Jean Seberg
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Nouvelle Vague
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