Showered with acclaim for his leading role as Jean-Luc Godard in Richard Linklater’s homage to French New Wave cinema, Nouvelle Vague, the 31-year-old’s pathway to acting has been beautifully scenic. He talks art, stepping into the frame, and embodying a filmmaker’s spirit.
Picture this: you grow up wanting one thing more than anything – to be a director. You worship Jacques Audiard, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Linklater (hold onto the last two names – they are important). You spend your young adult life at the mercy of cinema. You, in the hope of understanding the ins and outs of the business, try your hand at a medley of film industry roles, from jobs on set to prepping script productions to buying and distribution.
And then, as you enter your thirties, unsure of where this decade of experience will take you, a golden ticket falls on your lap. To be the star of the new Richard Linklater film – the American visionary behind the Before trilogy, Boyhood, Dazed and Confused, etc. A picture that tells an indelible story in the history of contemporary French cinema, specifically the New Wave movement of the early 1960s. And who would you play? Jean-Luc Godard, the legendary French-Swiss director and screenwriter. Depicting the making of his seminal debut picture, Breathless.
A unique opportunity, undoubtedly. One gifted to Guillaume Marbeck. And while it was serendipitous, lucky even, for him to get the call, there was in fact no man better for the job. “There was definitely a parallel between the moment of his life and mine,” the actor tells Man About Town, discussing his film debut in Nouvelle Vague, in which he takes on the lead role of Godard. The bond between Marbeck and his character is analogous – both finding their feet in a new situation, under the guidance of some master for whom they have utmost respect. In the 31-year-old Parisian’s case, his director Linklater provided a “masterclass” every day, offering him his first on-screen role, and sharpening his nuances of what’s needed to succeed behind it.
A somewhat niche, black & white picture about a French New Wave director who, although a savant of his craft, is not involved in broader contemporary conversations in English language cinema. This is a film that wouldn’t necessarily tend to make a global splash. But it has captured the hearts and minds of many. It received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, was featured at a plethora of the quintessential film festivals – from Telluride and Toronto to LFF and New York, and Cannes, where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or.
It’s a film primarily for cinephiles, but clocked with universal themes surrounding art, authenticity and ambition. It’s a love letter to a snapshot of time, an emblem of filmmaking spirit. And boasts deeply human performances from all involved – not least the excellent Marbeck, whose years of experience behind the scenes have prepared him astutely for this breakthrough moment. He joins Man About Town in January while in London promoting the film, discussing the parallels between him and Godard, working with Richard Linklater, and why the film has won over so many people.
Congratulations on your breakthrough role in Nouvelle Vague! How would you reflect on this topsy-turvy period of your life?
It’s been incredible to be able to participate in this project. I tried to imagine a better start for me, and I couldn’t find it. I get to work with an American director that I admire, portraying Jean-Luc Godard making Breathless. And the movie is in French, which is easier for me to act in French than in English, even though that would be a great challenge that I would be ready to accept. Imagining an American making a French film in Paris, the city I grew up in, about moviemaking, something that I wish to do in my life, is just a dream.
You spent your twenties working in different roles behind the scenes in cinema – what would you say are the key lessons that you learned during that period, and what were the challenges?
I actually wanted to become a director during all that time. And I made it there, but on screen. The goal was to understand every person’s job on a movie to understand what they can bring to the project that I’m not aware of, because you don’t know to what extent people can work for you if you haven’t done that job. So by doing all those jobs, I now have a sense of how far they can go and how demanding I can be and how they can bring some stuff that I couldn’t even imagine and be open to their ideas. And that was not the case before doing all this. I worked on movie sets, and I worked in preparation of productions and pitching sessions. Also, as a buyer at the film markets in Cannes. So I know how a movie is sold, how it’s distributed, how it’s made, and how you actually make the movie when you are on the set, which is the heart of the game. Because this is the moment where the time is the most limited and where you are spending the money the most. And so that is the high-key moment of making a film. And by doing all this, I realised that you cannot know everything or control everything, but you can delegate part of what you’re doing to the right people.
Who are the filmmakers that continue to inspire you?
I looked it up on my letterbox to see who gets my greatest notations. And Jacques Audiard wins it in France. In America, I guess it’s going to be Kubrick. Richard Linklater is also one of them. David Lynch. Paul Thomas Anderson. But in the end, I tend to love getting a new experience that I never had before when I’m watching a movie. I think this is the essence of cinema – you’re making something to put yourself into somebody else’s shoes or eyes and to watch them live differently, and understand a little bit more about humanity.
Seeing something new and learning about who and what humans are is something that Nouvelle Vague does really well – especially a younger generation who aren’t so familiar with the French New Wave, maybe with Godard as well. Considering the fact that you want to be a director, how did you embody a filmmaker’s spirit within the role?
Richard says it better than me – he says I have the unearned confidence of a first-time director. If you want to be a director, the first person you have to convince that you’re going to be a director is yourself. And then people are going to start buying it. So you have to fake it until you make it in a certain sense by making sure that you believe that you’re a director, even though it’s not already the case.
Do you feel that you’re looking at acting from the angle that a filmmaker would look at acting?
No, I’m looking at acting at the angle of all the jobs that you can do on a movie set. For the guy who’s doing the camera, if you turn your head a certain way, you’re going to have your best on-screen. The costume guys, if you’re masking the costume, then the shape of the body is going to look different. The sound guy, if you’re not using your diaphragm, then the sound is going to be shit. And if you’re not making essential movements during what you do, then during the trailer, there’s not going to be a lot of movement on the screen, and it’s going to look boring. And also, when you’re selling the movie, it’s important to understand all this. So in interviews, you know how to translate your experience into the movie to get people to watch what you’ve made and give them a sense of what they’re going to get without giving them what’s going to happen in the movie. In the end, it’s just trying to meet the expectations of myself as an audience member. When I’m watching a movie, I expect the actor to be a certain way, so that I can buy into the story and I don’t even think about how they are an actor. So when I’m preparing a role, I ask myself if that is good enough for the cinema. And if I don’t think so, I need to work more.
How was the process of working with Richard Linklater?
It was like having a masterclass every day. When I got to lunch, I could ask him about casting, about script writing, about producing, about everything. So it felt like Jean-Luc meeting his masters, and he’s trying to get insight and to understand how he can improve his movie and make sure that his movie is gonna be good. And I had the same experience with Richard, and it was really lovely because he’s somebody very open and that shares his past lives and his past films also. So it was really interesting to work with them, not only to see how he does by asking questions to his team, but also by learning from his experiences.
Does it feel like there’s quite a lot of parallels in Jean-Luc’s life to your own? Did you resonate with the character on a deeper, spiritual level?
Yes. We were both facing a first big opportunity to show that we think that we are artists and that we can bring something to the table to be entertaining for people. And at the same moment, a lot of people who were working in the crew as the actors working in the crew for Godard, were doing their first movie. So it was an echo chamber to that feeling. And Zoey Deutch was the only actress who was well known, while Jean Seberg, at the time, had made two movies already and was the only person known from that movie.
All the crew around that was making the movie felt that we were making something special. We were working with an American director on a topic that is very cherished by French people in cinema. So everybody was like a kid, trying to live that new wave thing. There was a perfume of new wave on the set that was in the air all the time.
On paper, if you forget the movie and see an American coming to Paris, and nobody on the crew speaks English, they are all French people. And they’re going to make a black-and-white movie about Jean-Luc Godard, who is an iconic figure that nobody can imagine making a movie about. That is a tricky plan. But in the end, it went really well. We did so many festivals, Cannes Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Toronto, Tereride, a lot of other festivals in other countries, San Sebastian, Festival of Rome, and in the UK also at BFI LFF. So this is incredible to think that for a first movie, it gets to travel all over the world. This is unbelievable.
So what do you think it is about the film that has captured the imagination and the attention of so many people globally?
We are in a time right now where we are questioning what an artist is, with AI that is replicating a lot of art. Do you care if the thing that you’re watching is made by somebody or a machine? Does it change anything? And also, what is something that cannot be done by machines? Breaking rules. Machines are all about rules, so how do you tell a machine to break rules? And what is the spirit of making art? Why do people do that? Does it matter if the end product is good or bad? Or does it matter that the adventure is great? And also to understand that you’re not born a genius. You’re born somebody who likes certain stuff, and if you hold to those things and you try working with them, eventually, by failing and failing, you end up doing something good. I think it’s very freeing to see that for a younger generation. Sometimes, when I was younger, I felt like making movies was not for me because I didn’t know anybody in the field, and it seemed too complicated. But this movie shows you how simple making movies can be.
This film also feels like a heist, you know? You rob the bank, and you make your movie the way you want.
You’ve had this great first step, and you have Couture with Angeline Jolie coming too. But what’s the rest of the year / the next couple of years looking like for you?
I have a lot of things coming on my desk, and it’s great because before [Nouvelle Vague] I had none. It feels unreal to me. But I don’t really know where I’m going to end up and what I’m going to end up doing because it’s a long process. Even if people are interested in me for a certain role, I have to do an audition, and then they have to be convinced by what I bring to the table. It doesn’t matter if it takes a long time or a short time to get the next project. I just want to make sure that it’s going to be the right project. I’m very curious to see where people are going to put me. Put me in thrillers or comedies or dramas or anything, because I play the biopic. You’re not in a box, no, it’s something different. So that’s interesting.
Nouvelle Vague is in UK cinemas now. All imagery courtesy of ARP Sélection & Altitude
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