Actually, for everybody, having sex the first time is never a good time. It's always a disaster.

I had in mind a case close to my family, friends of my parents, who seemed to be the perfect bourgeois family, and a young boy, who when he was 17, committed suicide. It was such a shock. The parents didn't understand. Nobody understood why he did that. Everybody was exploring his life, trying to understand what the problem was. Everybody had a feeling that this guy had the perfect life: he was beautiful, he was clever... but he did that. I had that in mind, about Isabelle in Young and Beautiful, for the parents to see adolescents like aliens.

Actually, for everybody, having sex the first time is never a good time. It's always a disaster.

Sometimes it's easier for me to do films about, and with, women, because I have more distance, I'm more lucid.

It was not easy when I was a teenager. But today, with the new technology, with the Internet, everybody can do prostitution with two clicks. During the period of Belle du Jour, it was a very strong decision to go into the profession, but now, if you need a little bit money, you go on a website and you say, "Can I have 50 dollars?" It's easy! I wanted to show these facilities.

When I spoke with psychoanalysts, they confirmed to me that the most neurotic relationship is always between mother and daughter. The cliché is to think it's because of the father, the absence of the father.

The first idea of Young and Beautiful was to have a young boy and to explore the sexuality of boys. But, I realized, with a boy doing prostitution, of course it has to deal with homosexuality. And I had a feeling it was too much for the film, you know, sexuality, prostitution, adolescence ... there were too many films for one film.