Waiting for the new Nouvelle Vague
Let’s get lost in film festivals. They are the best places to keep you awake and hold off the routine. To give you nausea, headaches, heart attacks, cold sweats and goose-flesh.
As a freelancer I review films (and books) for a living, which looks like the coolest job in the world to me, a privilege and, sometimes, a sacerdoce. I’m not a frustrated filmmaker. Just a professional, gleaming cinegoer, ecstatic to feel so small compared to the infinite wealth of her area of work. Films are my only motivation. Criticism is just the way I chose to approach them.
As most of my colleagues, I’m concerned by the threats to our job. Because of commercial pressure from publishers, publicists or film distributors, it can be hard sometimes to write serious criticism and our status tends to decline like the status of journalism more generally. Focusing on those scary trends is tempting and maybe comfortable. It’s also a passive position that can be dangerous. Staying obsessed by the quality of film criticism would be more useful and maybe more courageous.
This is the favourite topic of conversation of film critics after midnight. We looked at the problem from every angle during festivals’ starry nights. At the end, we always reach the same conclusion: the only solution to survive is to find a new way to address the reader, to have a clear voice that looks more honest than marketing sirens. Not in order to make or break a film. Just to arouse new desires. It’s not a miraculous recipe. Just the utopian solution found by some of us to avoid giving up.
Actually, I should be the last to complain. France is still a wonderful territory for filmmakers and film lovers. Even if things are changing too quickly, as shown by the alarming situation of our independent distributors. But still, we have good (and precarious) places to drop our pen and take some risks. So, what do we need now? The support of our editors, who in turn need the support of their CEOs. But first of all, we need a new generation of cheeky directors, actors and producers to rely on. Like our predecessors did with the Nouvelle Vague. It's time to forget about the Nouvelle Vague and look at upcoming professionals (and I’m glad to announce that a lot of them are women).
Let’s get lost in film festivals. Berlin, Stockholm, Fribourg, Goa… They are the best places to keep you awake and hold off the routine. To give you nausea, headaches, heart attacks, cold sweats and goose-flesh. Let’s hunt the rare birds and look for the new Nouvelle Vague, as the new film critics we want to be.
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