There's a fashion, or maybe you could call it a necessity, in French cinema to make social films, which is to say films in which the characters are defined by their social context.

There's a fashion, or maybe you could call it a necessity, in French cinema to make social films, which is to say films in which the characters are defined by their social context.

Paris, though it's a very famous city, it's very small, so people always tell themselves, "We're gonna love each other in Paris."

I think that what people abroad want from French film, inside French film becomes our worst fear, "Oh, another film about love!"

I think the moment I discovered I definitely wanted to act was when I saw a play alone by myself when I was fourteen. Maybe it was a Moliere play? I discovered the atmosphere of the theater, and I knew I wanted to be an actor.

Because I'm Parisian, I wanted to show a Paris that I don't see at the movies, so I spent a lot of time looking for places that have never been filmed, for streets that have never been filmed because there's a thing about Paris, where it's kind of like a charming music box, this luminous cocoon, like those things that have fake snow in them that you turn upside down.

The separation of a childless couple is dramatic, but the separation of a couple with children is always tragic.