Biography

He was scheduled to have directed an English-language film called The Pretender. Georges Benayoun was producing and Mathieu Kassovitz and Vincent Cassel were to have starred. Shooting, to have taken place in Eastern Europe, Paris, New York and London, was to have started in October 2001. The plot concerned recovery by a Jewish family of artwork stolen by the Nazis during World War 2. The film was budgeted at $23 million but was cancelled due to a dispute regarding the budget between Benayoun and StudioCanal.

Although I did go to movie school for four years, I believe where I learnt the most was by seeing movie after movie - and I have seen a lot of movies. I think that is the best way to learn about cinema.

[on The Apartment (1996)] I had written a script that I could not get anyone to produce, the script had taken me quite a long time to write. So then I thought, 'I'm going to write very quickly a story - a simple sentimental story - a modem fairytale. A guy who can't make up his mind about three women.' But I couldn't write this story, I was getting completely depressed - for months - and then I thought it could be interesting if one of the women could belong to the past, one to the present and one to the future. And the story evolved from there. One of the main themes of my movie is time. How people can get tangled in the past - disallowing them to live in the present. I tried to do a fairytale, a modern fairytale, as well as a thriller without guns, without policemen, only sentimental motivation.

[on the ending of The Apartment (1996)] I was very influenced by the comedies of the 50's - directors like Billy Wilder - when they were making fake happy endings, it apparently was a happy ending, but it was painful and sad at the same time, that's what I tried to do. I think it's quite a sad ending in fact. I like to mix comedy and tragedy - like life.