France’s great re-invention of cinema, pioneered by the “New Wave” of French filmmakers who started writing and directing in the 1950s, is charmingly remembered in Richard Linklater’s affectionate homage “Nouvelle Vague.”

The director of “Boyhood” and more tellingly “Me and Orson Welles” takes us back to the age of Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, Agnès Varda and Alain Resnais, movie makers who “broke the rules” of filmmaking, cemented the power of the director as “auteur” (author) of a film and brought new life to the cinema amid the rising tide of television.

The focus is on the New Wave’s “bad boy,” Jean-Luc Godard, like many of his contemporaries, a musing, passionate critic from the influencial magazine Cahiers du Cinema. Others from there had made movies because, as Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) quips — quoting Truffaut (Adrien Rouyard) in “Nouvelle Vague” — “The best way to critique a film is to make one!”

But when Godard made “Breathless,” the cinematic world was rattled. All these “rules” for how you tell a story on film are made to be broken.

“Nouvelle Vague” follows Godard, opinionating, preaching, hustling and smoking-smoking-smoking his way to making his feature film debut.

“All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun,” he preaches (in French with subtitles) behind his omnipresent — day or night, indoors or out — sunglasses. And by God he’s going to prove it.

He’ll need a producer (Bruno Dreyfürst) gullible enough to give him the pittance it’ll take to make his movie. He’ll need a combat-tested cameraman (Matthieu Penchinat) who can shoot, in black and white and on the fly with sound to be added later. He’ll need a script supervisor (Pauline Belle) to keep the story straight and ensure the shots match up in continuity terms when the film is edited, even though he is determined not to have a script, but a mere “outline.”

And for any of those elements to fall into place, he’ll need “the girl.” Luckily, the American starlet of “Saint Joan” and “Bonjour Tritesse” is in France with her new French husband
François (Paolo Luka-Noé). The arrogant, cool poseur Godard crashes a celebrity party, angles up to Seberg and before you know it, he’s got his movie.

It was the great coup of Godard’s career, landing an international star who woud ensure his movie got made and seen the world over. And the coup of Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” came from casting Zoey Deutch (“Set It Up,” “Not Okay,” “Buffaloed”) as Seberg.

This isn’t the brooding, paranoid (with reason) rebel Seberg of the Kristen Stewart bio-pic. Deutch and the screenwriters give us a starlet who quickly picked up on Hollywood’s heirarchy and the boundaries and barriers she’d face, who just as quickly clues in on Godard as something of a fraud.

But she’ll do the film “if the big bad wolves (of Hollywood) will let me.” Just watch yourself, Monsieur Godard. His amateur theatrics and unprofessionalism — no script, no sound-on-film (all the dialgue etc. will be added in post-production) — No “direction” other than “No performance!” — short shooting days because “I’ve run out of ideas” and the like bring out her blunt threat, delivered in French.

I just might quit your film,” you silly sunglassed French wannabe.

Deutch makes Seberg savvy, sassy and fun. Her Seberg clicks with her acting novice “boxer” co-star, screen newcomer and Godard pal Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin). “Nouvelle Vague” takes off when she shows up and slows down every time she and Dullin aren’t in a scene.

That’s because Linklater’s made a movie that takes a fanatically pedantic approach to ensuring that every important figure and “face” of this snapshot of film history is remembered, pointed out and given a chiseled-in-stone intertitle so that the viewer knows Linklater and four screenwriters did their homework.

Jean Cocteau and Bresson and Rossellini — Isabella’s dad, neorelist Roberto, the “godfather” of the New Wave — Rohmer and Jean-Pierre Melville are among the highlights in this parade of “They were there” names.

Melville (Tom Novembre), like everybody else, gives cocky Godard advice. But “Feel free to ignore what I”ve said. That’s what advice is for.”

Truffaut, a critic who led the way into directing with “The 400 Blows,” is Godard’s confidante, the one guy he’ll sit in the subway station with to have his script (outline) read and critiqued. He’s harder to ignore.

“Think of Rossellini…be witty like Sacha Guitry, musical like Welles, simple like Marcel Pagnonl, effective like Hitchcock, profound like Bergman and insolent like no one else!”

Linklater, who reveled in the youthful drive and droll-before-his-time wit in the pre-cinema Welles for “Me and Orson Welles,” a movie with Zac Efron and mainstream appeal, has taken Netflix’s money and made a movie for cinephiles, cineastes and students of the cinema, complete with footnotes.

It may be too “Cinema Appreciation 101” for many. But for those of us really into film history and the birth of a screen master making a movie DIY style, on the fly, on the cheap and destined to “change cinema,” even if only briefly as those “rules” for how to tell a story got set in stone for a reason, “Nouvelle Vague” checks all the boxes.

Let the masses ensure James Cameron’s last decades will be spent chained to his “Avatar.” The rest of us will ride along with Rich Linklater and remember how thrilling, challenging and moving cinema can be.

MPAA Rating: R, smoking, profanity

Cast: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, Aubry Dullin, Adrien Rouyard, Paolo Luka-Noé, Tom Novembre, Laurent Mothe, Jean-Jacques Le Vessier, Bruno Dreyfürst and Pauline Belle.

Credits: Directed by Richard Linklaker, scripted by Holly Gent, Vincent Palmo Jr.,Michèle Pétin and Laetitia Masson. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:46