Les films en Bretagne, the internet site created to promote film shooting in Brittany, have made a photo coverage of some of Skylab shooting, which ended at the beginning of July, 2010 (the Breton part, at least).

All photos here and now, in the photo album too.



(Julie Delpy and her father, Albert Delpy)


As a reminder:

The story takes place in 1979, during summer holidays in a family house in Brittany. For the grandmother birthday, the whole family - aunts and uncles, cousins, children are reunited during a restless week-end. A familial chronic as well as a chronic of a peculiar time, told by Albertine, 10 years old.

The film stars, among others,Julie Delpy, Eric Elmosnino, Aure Atika, Noémie Lvovsky, Bernadette Lafont, Emmanuelle Riva, Vincent Lacoste, Albert Delpy, Valérie Bonneton, Denis Menochet, Sophie Quinton, Marc Ruchman, Michèle Goddet, Jean-Louis Coulloc’h, Candide Sanchez.




The shooting film, about fifty technicians and forty actors (adults and children), stayed four weeks in Paimpont (Ille-et-Vilaine dept), with a 2-days shooting in Saint-Pierre-Quiberon (Morbihan dept).




Release date is expected in Spring 2011.


























Yesterday Philip Horne from The Telegraph picked "the 10 best celluloid paeans to the City of Light", and guess what? 2 of them star Julie Delpy, our favourite French-American actress!

(photo from Françoise)



America’s love story with France and things French can be a stormy affair – remember the redneck rage a few years back at the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"? But Hollywood’s vision of France and Frenchness, often of actual Americans in Paris, can be a gloriously heady experience.


Amongst the 10 telling cases of American infatuation with France:


Before Sunrise/ Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 1995/2004)

A magnificent, delightful, moving pair of films about the power, vicissitudes and uncertainties of love, made nine years apart with the same actors (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy). This spontaneous-feeling pair of movies, the latter a masterpiece, constitutes what Linklater calls "romance for realists": his characters find themselves forced to decide – in the city of lovers – whether one’s life should be ruled by deep intuitions.



Killing Zoe (Roger Avary, 1993)

Avary has had a chequered career since co-writing Pulp Fiction to say the least (he’s now in jail for manslaughter through drunk driving), but while unpleasant and unsettling in subject matter and full of sex, drugs and violence, and critically dismissed, his story of a hippyish American criminal called Zed (Eric Stoltz) joining old friends for a bank job in Paris only to find too late they’re drug-crazed murderous losers wins passionate admirers.


More about Killing Zoé in another post...

Le festival Cinema en Plein Air a lieu à la Villette du 17 juillet au 22 août 2010. Il a pour thème cette année "Avoir 20 ans". Toutes les projections commencent à la nuit tombée, et sont d'accès libre et gratuit (attention la location de transat et couverture est payante).

Une projection de Mauvais Sang aura lieu dans ce cadre le dimanche 1er août, pour lequel Julie Delpy avait été nominée aux Césars 1987 dans la catégorie "Meilleur espoir féminin".

L'occasion de revoir en grand écran ce film à part, que les Inrocks n'hésite pas à qualifier de film culte:


Qu’est-ce-qu’un film culte ? Par exemple Mauvais sang de Leos Carax, chef-d’œuvre des années 80 qui sort en DVD. Un polar poétique et pop, une fuite vers la mort où chaque plan est un cierge déposé aux pieds de cinéastes anciens. Unique.

Au mitan des années 80, la fréquentation des salles de cinéma chute régulièrement. Des critiques (Serge Daney en tête), des cinéastes (Godard justement, mais aussi Wenders) parlent fréquemment de “la mort du cinéma”. Le vocabulaire cinématographique est en concurrence avec d’autres idiomes, d’autres régimes visuels de plus en plus puissants – la télévision, le clip, la publicité.

Cette intuition soudaine du cinéma comme forme mortelle s’accompagne alors d’un sentiment presque religieux à son égard.

Mauvais sang est peut-être le film le plus absolu de cette religiosité cinéphile. Chaque plan y est un autel dévolu au culte de cinéastes anciens (Godard donc, mais aussi Chaplin, Griffith, Garrel, Cocteau...), chaque visage est une icône, chaque image une relique. Et parce que le cinéaste qui met en scène est un jeune homme d’à peine 25 ans, le film a la puissance associée d’une toute première et d’une toute dernière fois, simultanément dans l’émoi fiévreux de la découverte et le tragique de la disparition.

Le film est tout entier tendu vers la vitesse et l’apesanteur, des sauts en parachute deviennent des étreintes aériennes suspendues, on y court à en perdre haleine, on s’enfuit à moto, le ciel est là, par-dessus tout, avec ses comètes qui dérèglent le climat (“La comète de Haley ?... Allez !”, s’amuse Anna/Juliette Binoche) et ses nuits étoilées comme des toiles peintes. Mais si les désirs s’envolent, les corps inexorablement chutent.


(...)


C’est dire si, plus encore qu’à sa sortie, Mauvais sang est un joyau très solitaire. Son accomplissement, poétique et plastique, est magistral, constamment inspiré et gracieux, et en même temps quelque chose de fragile le mine. Trop unique, trop dans un désir enfantin d’absolu. Sa beauté est celle des licornes, des étoiles de mer. Flamboyant et étrange. Rare. Chimérique. Aurait-on rêvé Mauvais sang ?



Un petit aperçu avec la scène bien connue des adieux d'Alex à Lise...

Fridays at Old Pasadena

14:33 Tuesday 20 July 2010

This summer, lucky californians from Pasadena can attend The Old Pasadena Film Festival, a free four-week movie series that unites film with urban settings, taking place on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, July 8 through 31.

Featuring multiple screenings, the Old Pasadena Film Festival is the largest free outdoor film festival in Southern California. This unique district-wide festival will showcase a variety of genres that reflect the urban environment of Old Pasadena’s famous and historic downtown.

All Old Pasadena Film Festival screenings, appearances and events are free and open to the public.

And guess what?

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are on the menu, with the first one programmed on Friday 23rd of July, and the second one on Friday 30th (both at Distant Lands, 7.30 pm).

A nice way to spend a summer evening!

A l'occasion de la sortie française de Before Sunset, Nelly Kaprièlan des Inrocks a eu la chance de pouvoir interviewé Julie Delpy (16/03/2005). En ressort un portrait pas complètement original (cf post précédent), mais qui revient sur la personnalité de l'actrice (entière, parano, obsessionnelle, intègre), ses relations tumultueuses avec les premiers réalisateurs avec lesquels elle a tourné (notamment Carax et Kieslowski), son énergie, sa beauté...

Extraits:


Un bonnet noir enfoncé jusqu'aux yeux, la démarche assurée dans des grosses UGG boots, le tutoiement direct, Julie Delpy n'a strictement rien à voir avec l'ado éthérée et botticellienne qui hanta le cinéma français fin 80's. Exit l'ange de Mauvais sang, la vierge de La Passion Béatrice. La fille qu'on a en face de soi s'est endurcie, a pris de la bouteille, est tombée, s'est relevée, et sait plus que jamais ce qu'elle veut. Au bout de cinq minutes d'entretien au bar du Lutetia, elle se lève pour exiger qu'on baisse la musique, prévient qu'elle a mangé de l'ail à midi et ne veut pas nous asphyxier, rit beaucoup, et finira, une heure et demie plus tard, par nous conseiller d'"essayer" les Allemands et les Nordiques, les seuls mecs au comportement pas névrosé avec les femmes, vu qu'ils ont reçu une éducation féministe...


Julie Delpy est plus qu'une nature : elle est réelle. Incroyablement réelle. Pour une actrice, on entend. Ni langue de bois, ni pose, ni mystère à cultiver, ni injections de collagène, ni portemanteau pour marque de luxe. Bref, une fille avec qui l'exercice de l'entretien se mue en vraie discussion, comme avec les vraies gens, nos vrais amis, dans la vraie vie. C'est cette réalité qu'elle prête à Céline dans Before Sunset (lire critique page 38). Une heure et vingt minutes de conversation naturelle et pourtant hypertravaillée par les deux acteurs et le réalisateur, qui y ont insufflé leur propre expérience : "On voulait éviter toute caricature, trop courante dans la comédie romantique. J'ai envoyé le premier jet du scénario à Richard Linklater, puis on a retravaillé ensemble, avec Ethan Hawke, pour que Jesse et Céline ressemblent aux gens qu'on croise, parlent comme nous tous, tous les jours. Mais pour ça, il nous a fallu laisser tomber toutes nos inhibitions, nous confier les uns aux autres... Comme par ailleurs nous sommes très amis, cela a été possible." Treize ans après avoir disparu des plateaux français, la Delpy revient en force, auréolée d'un très beau film et d'une nomination aux derniers oscars comme coscénariste.

"Pourtant, la sortie en France reste la seule à m'angoisser." Elle dit qu'ici on ne l'aime pas, que les gens lui en veulent d'avoir quitté la France, qu'elle a des tas d'ennemis, qu'ils vont la casser. Mais elle se dit aussi parano, autodestructrice, obsessionnelle (pour le travail), sourde aux compliments mais masochistement attentive aux critiques. "Je suis complètement névrosée, mais je deale avec." Et ça sonne comme un mantra, celui d'une fille qui a su transformer ses échecs en travail pour avancer.


Julie Delpy, c'est peut-être l'itinéraire le plus atypique du cinéma français. Jeune étoile échouée après avoir irradié dans trois films, autoflagellée, partie trop tôt, trop vite, avant d'exploser complètement ; ou alors jeunesse vite brûlée, cramée, voire carrément calcinée par les feux de la profession pour délit de grande gueule. "C'est plutôt ça. J'ai trop parlé, on me l'a violemment reproché, et après je n'ai plus eu une seule proposition de tournage en France. Je suis partie parce que j'avais des propositions à l'étranger, de Krzysztof Kieslowski, d'Agnieszka Holland pour Europa, Europa..." Tricarde parce qu'elle s'en était prise à un cinéaste et à sa muse, avait osé transgresser la règle du silence inhérente à la grande famille du cinéma. "Je ne veux plus en parler. Je n'en veux plus à personne. C'est aussi cela qui a fait de moi ce que je suis aujourd'hui, et j'adore ma vie."


Mais quand on lui demande son pire souvenir, elle ne résiste pas à l'envie de narrer l'accident de moto sur le tournage de Mauvais sang et ses démêlés avec le réalisateur tendance de l'époque : "J'étais blessée et Carax m'a fait continuer à jouer, malgré la douleur, me faisant croire que si j'arrêtais, si j'osais me plaindre, j'étais une mauvaise actrice. J'ai risqué de perdre ma jambe. J'avais 15 ans, j'étais naïve, c'était facile de me manipuler." Episode fondateur de ses choix à venir.


A 16 ans, juste après Mauvais sang, elle décide qu'elle ne sera plus seulement actrice, plus seulement matière malléable et objet manipulé, et elle se met à écrire. Peu après, elle file à New York faire une école de cinéma. Maîtresse de sa vie. Delpy est cet éternel Phénix qui renaît de ses cendres, même au risque de prendre des détours sinueux pour parvenir à ses fins. Vingt ans d'écriture, dont treize d'exil, et enfin la possibilité de voir un de ses scénarios réalisé (Before Sunset). "Ma vie est une vie de difficultés. Je travaille énormément, et j'ai peu en retour par rapport au travail que je fournis et à mon implication." Elle admet s'être mis elle-même des bâtons dans les roues : "Je ne sais pas me vendre. Et puis je suis intègre. Je n'ai jamais utilisé autre chose que mon travail pour qu'un cinéaste me fasse tourner. J'ai vu trop d'acteurs utiliser le pouvoir ou le sexe pour se faire engager, et je n'ai aucun respect pour eux. Le problème, c'est qu'en étant ainsi on travaille moins, sauf avec des gens intègres eux aussi." Comme par exemple Richard Linklater, et aussi Jim Jarmusch, avec qui elle a tourné en novembre (un petit rôle dans son nouveau film avec un Bill Murray entouré d'actrices).


Au fond, Julie Delpy ressemble au personnage qu'elle incarnait récemment dans cinq épisodes de la série Urgences : cette jeune Française névrosée qui bousculait les règles rigides de l'hôpital, mettait un boxon d'enfer, brisant au passage le c'ur d'un des médecins, avant de disparaître au Canada. Bouleversante et drôle, le genre de figure qui nous tire de l'ennui, de la fadeur des professionnels de la profession, comme disait Godard, qui lui a offert son premier rôle en 1984 dans Détective. Pas actrice méritante, mais blonde piquante qui balade son côté loseuse magnifique dans Before Sunset et parvient à être belle, sexy, intelligente et comique en même temps, un registre que trop peu d'actrices hexagonales peuvent occuper. Et si Delpy était notre Sarah Jessica Parker française ? Trop étrange pour un pays trop frileux pour oser l'équivalent d'un Sex and the City ou d'un Absolutely Fabulous.



[Edit] For English readers, here is a basic translation of the interview (some of the nuances might be a little wasted...)


A black cap pulled down over her eyes, big firm step in UGG boots, relaxed and direct Julie Delpy has absolutely nothing to do with the ethereal Botticellian teen that haunted the late 80's French cinema. Exit the Angel of Mauvais Sang, the Virgin of Passion Beatrice. The girl who is in front of you has hardened, aged, fell, rose, and knows more than ever what she wants. After five minutes of conversation at the bar of Lutetia, she rises to require that they lower the music, warns us she has eaten garlic at noon and do not want to indispose us, laughs, and eventually, one hour and a half later, will finish by advising us to "try" Germans and Nordics, the only guys who don’t have neurotic behaviours with women, as they had a feminist education ...

Julie Delpy is more than a portrait: she’s real. Incredibly real. For an actress, we mean. No waffles, no mystery to cultivate, or collagen injections, or portmanteau for luxury brand. In short, a girl with whom the exercise of the interview turns into a real discussion, as with real people, our true friends in real life. This is a reality she lends to Celine in Before Sunset (read review page 38). An hour and twenty minutes of natural conversation, and yet hyperworked by both actors and director, who have instilled their own experience: "We wanted to avoid caricature, too common in the romantic comedy. I sent the first draft script Richard Linklater, then reworked together with Ethan Hawke to make Jesse and Celine resemble to the people we meet, talk like us, everyday. But for that, we had to drop all inhibitions, to be open with each others ... As we are also very good friends, it has been possible." Thirteen years after she disappeared from French cinema, Delpy comes back, brightened by a beautiful movie and nominated for an Oscar as co-writer.


”However, the French release is the only that distresses me." She says that here no one likes her, that people resent her for leaving France, that she has lots of enemies, that they will break her. But she says she is also paranoid, self-destructive, obsessive (with work), deaf to compliments but masochistically careful to criticism. "I'm completely neurotic, but I deal with it." And it sounds like a mantra, the one of a girl who has turned her failures in success to progress.

Julie Delpy has perhaps the most unusual path in the French cinema. Young star
stranded after irradiating in three films, autoflagellated and left too soon, too fast, before exploding completely; or youth quickly burned by the fires of the profession for the crime of having a big mouth. "Rather that. I talked too much, I have been severely criticized for that, and then I have not had a single proposal of shooting in France. I left because I had some suggestions to film abroad, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland for Europa, Europa ..." Embossed because she had criticized a filmmaker and his muse, had dared transgress the rule of silence inherent in the great family film. "I do not want to talk about it. I do not resent anyone anymore. This is also what made me what I am today, and I love my life."
But when asked about her worst memory, she can not resist the urge to tell a motorcycle accident on the set of Mauvais Sang and her clashes with the trendy director: "I was hurt and Carax made me continue to play despite the pain, making me believe that if I stopped, if I dared complain, I was a bad actress. I risked losing my leg. I was 15, I was naive, it was easy to manipulate me." An episode founder of her future choices.

At 16, just after Mauvais Sang, she decides she will not be only an actress anymore, a malleable object, and she began to write. Shortly afterward, she flies to New York to study cinema. Mistress of her life. Delpy is this eternal phoenix rising from the ashes, even at the risk of taking cobblestone paths to achieve her ends. Twenty years of writing, thirteen of exile, and finally the possibility of seeing one of her scripts produced (Before Sunset). "My life is a life of hardship. I work a lot, and I have little in return comparing to my work and commitment." She admits to having complicated her situation herself: "I do not know how to sell myself. And I'm honest. I've never used anything but my work for a filmmaker to make me shoot. I've seen too many actors use the power or sex to get hired, and I have no respect for them. The problem is that when you’re like that you work less, except with people of integrity." As, for example, Richard Linklater, and Jim Jarmusch, with whom she shot in November (a small role in his new movie with Bill Murray).


Basically, Julie Delpy resembles the character she embodied in five recent episodes of ER: this French neurotic young woman who shook up the rigid rules of the hospital, put a brothel hell, breaking the heart of one of the doctors, before disappearing in Canada. Disturbing and funny, the kind of figure that pulls us out of boredom, the dullness of professional actors. Not as a deserving actress, but as a hot blonde that walks her loser side in Before Sunset and manages to be beautiful, sexy, smart and funny at the same time, a register that too few French actresses can occupy. What if Delpy was our French Sarah Jessica Parker? Too strange for a country too timid to create the equivalent of Sex and the City or Absolutely Fabulous.

Bord Cadre, avril 2010

17:44 Tuesday 13 July 2010



A l'occasion de la sortie de La Comtesse dans les salles françaises, Julie Delpy a participé à l'émission Bord Cadre présentée par Pierre Zéni sur CineCinéma Premier.



La vidéo de l'émission est disponible sur le site de Canal+.

Julie Delpy appeared in Bord Cadre - a CineCinéma Premier program - in April 2010 for The Countess release in France.


The 22 mins interview is in French, so I translated the first part of the interview:

Pierre Zéni (PZ): Let's begin with 7 questions...'cupidity': are you paid well enough?
Julie Delpy (JD): Ah, I had thought about this one...hmmm...not really, well, I can't answer that one, no, I would say no.
PZ: Do you want to work more so as to make more money ?
JD: I work a lot already...I'd like to make more money but to work more I'd have to stop sleeping maybe...
PZ: 'Envy': with whom would you exchange your career?
JD: Hmm, I don't know, James Cameron (laughter)...nan, nan, seriously...
PZ: You are going to realize Avatar 2 ?
JD: Yes, Avatar 2...(laughter)

PZ: 'Anger': what makes you lose your temper today in cinema?
JD: Nothing actually...I was angry when I was 15 and found many things were unfair, but now, in fact, nothing, I'm very calmed down...
PZ: 'Lust': would you do anything in front of the camera?
JD: No, no, I'm not ready for anything... but behind the camera, yes! (laughter)
PZ: 'Greed': What are you hungry for today?
JD: Couscous-merguez (laughter)...

PZ: 'Pride': Do you like what you've become?
JD: I don't know what I've become...A big question there! Let's say I like more who I am today than who I was 20 years ago...I managed to take a direction I like...
PZ: You like yourself more?
JD: No, I don't like myself more but I like the way I've taken for my life...

PZ: OK...Julie Delpy, are you sensitive to critics?
JD: Yes, I am, but at the same time, when I'm being criticized hard it makes me laugh sometimes, I like it, and when it is justified, then I try to take critics into account...
PZ: Good! We met some people that know you and your career...We met Bertrand Tavernier (La Passion Béatrice), Alex Descas, who knows you well, and Denis Lavant your partner from Mauvais Sang:

Bertrand Tavernier: I think that Julie was an actress labelled as 'exceptional', who went for bold projects ...
Alex Descas: It's her nature, she's frank, she's thoroughgoing, she can be bad-tempered but she's always honest, that's what I like about her...
Bertrand Tavernier: When she left I was a bit afraid that she would lose herself, but finally she did good and manage to survive, which is tough for actresses...
Denis Lavant: I find it really good that she has found her place in the American society, that she has some possibility there to follow her own creative path...
Bertrand Tavernier: Her fancy, her sense of comic, her madness, that's what I like about her...that can be frightful too!
Alex Descas: She has always wanted to write, so she did it, and because she is tenacious she managed to do it...
Denis Lavant: I'd be curious to know if Leos Carax saw her films, with time, and what he thinks about her, because it is the confrontation of 2 creators...
JD: I love Denis, I love them...
PZ: Do you have news from Leos Carax?
JD: Not at all....but you know back in those days I was very pissed with him after the filmshoot...I was very young and very...(sign of anger) - but now I have no anger against anyone...it took me time to find myself, it was difficult, and the fact that I was not creative at the time - I was an actress, which is not a very creative position, and it was a real conflict for me...I was not happy...
PZ: Was that a revenge to become a director?
JD: No, not at all, it was not a revenge at all, it was a need, a vital need...
PZ: More vital than being an actress?
JD: Oh yes, 100 times more, I have every respect for actors, I know actors are very fragile, but I had the need to write, I write since I'm a little girl and stopped when I became an actress, which was odd...
PZ: And so why did you leave?
JD: I had the need to reinvent myself - I was feeling very bad with myself at the time, and it took me years to realize that I was feeling bad because I didn't do what I wanted to...
PZ: You were too young to be an actress?
JD: No, not really, you're never too young to begin...It was hard because it's a tough world, and I am very very straight,
so the slightest bit of corruption made me mad, nowadays I don't care...
PZ: Where does it come from, your education?
JD: Yes, it's my education, it's my parents fault...(laughter)






Bonjour,

Karius de Parius a eu la chance de pouvoir tourner avec Julie Delpy et Eric Elmosnino sur la scène du Skylab, en gare de Saint-Malo:

Photos of Skylab filmshoot from an extra:

Toutes les photos ici et .


Merci pour cet aperçu, Karianne!

(Source pour cette photo)



The journalists seem always surprised on how tough Julie Delpy can be, especially in contrast with her angelic physical appearance; an example of that astonishment with the very original interview that Ryan Gilbey made for The Guardian a few years ago when Julie Delpy was promoting 2 days in Paris:



Julie Delpy smokes and smokes. She smokes so much she should consider wearing ashtrays as trinkets. We are in a faux-rustic restaurant in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, where she is promoting the sharp and funny 2 Days in Paris, a romcom with bite, which she wrote, directed, produced, edited, scored, starred in and presumably smoked all the way through making. At first I think the only time she's not smoking is when she's talking. But she has so much to say - she can rattle off an entire exhaustive answer before you've finished asking your initial question - that eventually the division between speaking and inhaling vanishes, and the words are tumbling from her mouth wreathed in smoke. It doesn't sound very attractive, but remember this is Julie Delpy. She could be up to her elbows in offal, belching the Marseillaise, but she'd still have admirers establishing cults in her name. And chances are she'd still loathe that kind of attention.



"I hate being a male fantasy," she spits. "So many times I've been in a room pitching some movie to the financiers, and they're blatantly just staring at my legs." Before this conjures images of a stereotypical Hollywood executive leering from behind his desk, Delpy is quick to point out she won't take that behaviour from revered arthouse auteurs either. In the early 1990s, she auditioned for the dual lead roles in Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique. "He asked me to do a sexy gesture," she says, her incredulity undiminished after all these years. "That really bothered me. So I did this ..." She pokes her tongue out and tugs on her earlobes like a playground brat. "I knew by the look on his face that I hadn't got the part. But I was really mad with him. All that younger-woman bullshit you get. That fucking pervert. That... man!" She makes the noun drip with derision.



Delpy and Kieslowski eventually worked together in Three Colours: White (1994), in which he cast her as a woman who divorces her husband when he fails to consummate their marriage. And the pair enjoyed a friendship - Delpy now says that the late director was "the greatest man in the world". "I think my audition for Veronique convinced him I could play someone a bit hard to handle. Not that I'm bad-tempered. But I have my pet peeves. I always hated, when I was growing up, all these directors who wanted to be my Pygmalion." (...)"I like to be the Pygmalion, instead of someone else," she decides. "I prefer to make people into things, not be moulded by other people."


The most interesting thing about the 37-year-old Delpy in person is her unexpected hardness. I suddenly realise she's never shown it fully in any of her performances. Yes, there was a hint of it in Three Colours: White. But while she is sublime in her signature role, as the idealistic Céline in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995) and its sequel Before Sunset (2004), she only gets to play the odd prickly moment. Even in An American Werewolf In Paris (1997) - which, like her brief spell in TV's ER, was one of the few mainstream concessions in a stubbornly marginal career - she is a smiling lycanthropic temptress, never quite dredging up the darkness necessary to tip that film from comedy into horror. The woman herself is another matter. Beneath the playful indiscretion and hearty laughter is something flinty, businesslike and brusque.



It's all the more fascinating because she was out in public a few nights earlier, putting on what I now realise was a performance. After a rapturously received gala screening of 2 Days in Paris, she stumbled up the red-carpeted steps, then blathered absent-mindedly into the microphone. It was nothing like the focused, clear-sighted woman sitting before me. Possibly she felt there was spikiness enough in her film, and that the audience that night deserved a taste of Brand Delpy, with its inbuilt promise of gap-year goofiness.


(About 2 days in Paris) A rather worrying motif of castration and dismemberment runs through the film. "The truth is it was written and directed so quickly, I didn't have time to analyse it. Yes, there is talk about chopping off penises, condoms cutting off circulation, penises needing to be lifted with balloons, so I have to say ... No comment." She seems genuinely bashful, caught out by the subtext of her own film. "I scare myself. I think I have a penis obsession. Because I don't have a penis. Well, I mean, I have one at home. But it's not on me. It's attached to my partner. Maybe I wish I had one ..." She takes a few urgent drags on her cigarette, wafting away the smoke, and the subject.


(On the differences between "2 days in Paris" and "Before Sunset") "I twisted the idea of Before Sunset. I love that film but the characters are in a bubble; Paris has no influence. Here, it's the opposite. The city is destroying Marion and Jack - their environment is literally attacking them."


"I love acting," she says, "but I'm not a very actressy person. I don't like the vanity it encourages, the way it makes you concerned about your age or your appearance. Writing doesn't have that problem. For me, writing comes - well, I wouldn't say before love but ..." She thinks for a moment, gives a little wobble of the head and changes her mind. "Yeah, I'd say it comes before."