When I was at school at Paris, I had special lessons from Mademoiselle Antoine, an actress at the Comedie Francaise, and I was taken to every sort of play. I felt very grand.
Paris was incredible. Everything about it for me, from spending hours eating, drinking and talking to walking through the streets...at that time I hadn't seen that sort of political passion in the youth, and I got to experience that first hand.
You can't escape the past in Paris, and yet what's so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn't seem to burden.
Send me 300 francs; that sum will enable me to go to Paris. There, at least, one can cut a figure and surmount obstacles. Everything tells me I shall succeed. Will you prevent me from doing so for the want of 100 crowns?
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.