It’s hard to imagine an American indie movie more suitable for a Cannes red-carpet premiere than Richard Linklater‘s Nouvelle Vague. The maverick director’s black-and-white love letter to the French New Wave premiered to a rapturous response Saturday night inside Cannes’ Palais des Festivals, drawing a 10-minute-plus standing ovation from the black-tie crowd.
“Cinema is magic,” Linklater said as the house lights came up inside the cinema and the applause finally began to dwindle.
The standing ovation even got started before the lights came on as the crowd began clapping in unison for the love letter to French cinema.
Going into the night, there…