One of the biggest problems of our contemporary civilization is that there's been an interruption of transmission. People have no past in their present.

When you see people on the street, they're living in their phones. They aren't living where they are - they haven't got the energy of the past. And so it's something that needs to be reestablished.

I work very hard to achieve simplicity, which is never natural, never spontaneous. It's always obtained at the price of a great effort.

I don't like things to be overcharged, because otherwise everyone starts getting nervous. I try to be very well organized. When I write the script, everything is already in there, like the decoupage.

In France, we have laïcité, which means that atheism is almost our state religion. But I think a very important part of Western culture is in the centuries when Christianism was dominant and was present in almost all works of art - not only liturgical works, but also literature and music. Yes, it's important to have that in our present. It doesn't mean that people have to adhere to a dogma or practice a religion, but it's part of our heritage, and you have to at least try to understand it. Otherwise you can't be a modern person.

It's one of the bases of all human existence - the relation between parents and children, whether biologically or metaphorically. It's something we can never get away from, even in a civilization where we're controlled by robots. It's the basic relationship between mature people who represent paternal and maternal figures and young people. It's universal - it's part of human existence. It's always been that way, and it will always be that way if humans remain around.

Mature people transmit to young people a certain wisdom that comes from maturity, but young people are close to a more intuitive wisdom, and they can give that back to older people who have lost it to their maturation.