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I'm very happy in France making movies.

What I think I'm perceived as in France is, like, I'm this leading man always doing strange movies because most of the movies I did, like 'Irreversible' or 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' and a bunch of others, and even in France, they always come out as a particular movie, not like the typical French kind of movies that people know most of the time.

Today's cinema is a global art form, it is impossible to make movies for a market the size of France, representing no more than 4% of the world's total.

Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies.

The French have got to understand that a film is so expensive that it can no longer afford to be regional or even national in scope.

When a French book becomes an international hit it is because of the author and not because of the language. The same goes for movies.

I grew up watching a lot of French cinema.

In movies, there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet, difficult undertaking, requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.

I think what's very French is the mixture of comedy with intimacy and a kind of reflectiveness. For U.S. audiences, the nearest thing is Woody Allen.

I had always studied French and was obsessed with French films. I hated the way American films always had happy endings. I liked the way French films had dark and unpleasant characters; it was much more realistic.