The journalist and writer Stephen O'Shea has recently re-published an interview he made of Julie Delpy in 1991, when she had just filmed Voyager, an adaptation of Max Frisch’s novel Homo Faber. Here is the intriguing synopsis by Rotten Tomatoes:

An engineer survives a plane crash in Mexico in 1957. When a friend commits suicide, he returns to New York and embarks on an ocean voyage to Europe. On the ship, he meets Sabeth, a ravishing young girl who captures his heart. With Sabeth, Faber experiences real emotions for the first time, until he discovers the truth about her past, and his own.

The movie got mixed reviews, good ones (See for ex. Roger Erbert from the Chicago Sun-Times) or less good ones (See Desson Howe from The Washington Post).


In his interview with Julie Delpy, Stephen O'Shea comes back on her image and the roles she played, which don't necessarily correspond to her real nature. Here are some extracts of a very interesting interview:

Appearances are more than deceptive in the case of Julie Delpy – they’re barefaced liars. Easily the most outspoken, opinionated and downright smart actress in Europe, Delpy has nonetheless made a career of playing sweet, sunny vestals sullied by the forces of lust. Ever since Jean-Luc Godard gave this daughter of French stage actors Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet a small part in Détective when she was fifteen, French critics have hailed her as “a Pre-Raphaelite” or the like. (...)

sos: People have said that you yourself are something of a symbol.

JD: Right, a symbol of the past. I’m a bit sick of all that. I’d really like to do a film that is set in the present. It’s strange, because I’m not at all the type of person who gets dreamy about the past. It’s all because of the way I look, not the way I think. I don’t take myself for an icon, that’s for sure. I like to have a good time.

sos: You once said that most the scripts you’re given are written by guys who are trying to get even with their girlfriends, and that all the female characters are nothing but slabs of meat to be tossed around.

JD: I think that might be changing. Thelma & Louise is really encouraging that way. I’d love to get a part in a film like that. Not some skinny uptight feminist, but a woman who accepts herself as a woman and who doesn’t let other people walk all over her. Of course, I may be too young to pull it off now, but I know I’ll do it some day.

sos: So it’s good-bye to being an icon?

JD: You can’t totally spit on where you’ve been. I know I’ve got a bit of a pure and soft image – I can’t deny that. But you can change things.(...)

sos: You’re not turning pro-America, are you?

JD: I hate the place and I love it. But, as time goes by, I like it more and more. Sure, I don’t live there and I don’t have to face the horrendous social problems, but at least people there are fighting for things, at least they’re active. Not like in France, where almost everybody’s asleep. I spent several months in America, and I found that Americans were less apathetic, less asleep, more open to the arts. They don’t rest on their laurels. In France, somebody makes one good movie and he thinks he’s set for life. It’s a terrible thing to say, but once there’s a certain ease, boredom sets in. That’s what France is like. It’s soft, sad, boring. Everything is fine, so nothing is fine. There’s a line I always remember from a Max Ophüls move [Le Plaisir], that happiness is not cheerful. In America, there are outsiders, outcasts, and that’s where creativity comes from. I feel good when I’m in America and I hear someone yelling in the street. But maybe this is all very stupid and European of me.

sos: Yet you continue to live in Paris.

JD: I was exaggerating. I know a lot of great people here, and not just in the movies. There are a lot of weird things going on, though you’d never guess it. Some people I know look perfectly normal, but they spend every weekend in the sewers of Paris, having parties and just staying underground.

sos: That appeals to you?

JD: To my imagination. Did you ever see Eraserhead? That’s the sort of imaginary world I’ve lived in ever since I was a kid and my father used to tell me terrifying things before I went to sleep.

sos: I see. You once said that Peter Lorre was your role model.

JD: Oh, he still is!

Interesting when we know she decided a few years after that interview to move to Los Angeles, and become part American!