very different men. Suddenly I remembered that I had the scuba diver at home and I decided to include it in the scene. The critics understood that Marina was masturbating but that wasn’t my intention. The scuba diver is swimming in the water, he goes between her open legs and ends up bumping into and running aground against Marina’s vagina and she, smiling, lets him stay there. For me, the scuba diver represents in a very physical way the desire of the two men who had just approached her, a desire that is directed at her vagina but ends up waiting at the door. I was so delighted I’d bought it at the airport and hadn’t given it to my nephew! I could give you a thousand examples like that.

You told me that as you’ve gotten older you’ve become more interested in noir and thrillers. Why do you think that is?
I was a great reader of crime novels when I was young, however it was when I got older that I came to value more the film version of that genre. For me ‘noir’ is a sublimation of melodrama. If you strip melodrama, as I understand it, of humour, the fatality acquires greater importance, and fatality is a determining element in “films noir”. I needed to let time pass, to live a more solitary, indoor life in order to become interested in thrillers. But I don’t mean that this is a necessary route….

What role does love play in your films?
I only conceive of characters driven by an irrational, passionate love that is linked to desire. In real life it can be annihilating, but those are the stories I like to tell. Desire, when it coincides with love, can move mountains, and it certainly dynamites the narrative enormously. I’m talking about love between people, but one can and should feel love/passion for many things, and that also forms part of my characters.