Cannes breathes in the love

The French festival loves a film that references itself, with the latest being Nouvelle Vague’, Richard Linklater’s jaunty Breativess’ tribute. It’s no empty pastiche, says Xan Brooks

- Xan Brooks

I’ve recently returned from the Cannes film festival, which was very nice, thanks for asking. Plenty of movies, hours of queuing, plus a side order of those weird juxtapositions that you only get at an event that thinks nothing of hosting the launch party for a social realist Romanian film about the underclass on the deck of a billionaire’s yacht. My brief conversation with Robert De Niro was drowned out by screaming fans of Tom Cruise. A Brazilian climate change activist picketed Kevin Spacey’s gala dinner. Last week a palm tree fell down and injured a passing film producer. So far as I’m aware, this was the only major mishap.

The festival loves films and it loves films about films. But what Cannes especially loves is films that either reference or feature the Cannes film festival. It has been said that the one sure-fire means of having your movie selected is to include a quick shoutout to Cannes, or a scene on the French Riviera. Last year’s opening picture, Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act (2024), contained a bunch of sparring actors who hold the event in high esteem, while the noxious Grace of Monaco (2014) naturally swung by for a lengthy visit. Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island (2021) had its lovers pine for Cannes from the safety of a Swedish artists’ hideaway. Rocketman (2019), I recall, climaxed with a rehash of the “I’m Still Standing” video, which was shot on the beach of Cannes’s luxury Carlton hotel.

This year’s Cannes-centric affair was Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a jaunty behind-the-scenes tour of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) – that insouciant, jumpcutting tour-de-force of noir cinema. The film’s subject matter dictates that most of the action takes place in a modish postwar Paris (bistros, Gauloises, sleek black Citroen cars). All the same,