Questions

Everyone loves questionnaires! Dante Ciampaglia called my attention to this cinematic equivalent of the famous Proust questionnaire by film critic Didier Peron, which was translated into English by New Yorker writer Richard Brody.

I bite:

The first image?
All those brightly colored umbrellas dancing in the rain from Umbrellas of Cherbourg

The film (or the scene) that traumatized your childhood?
Maleficent from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. She featured prominently in my nightmares for years.

The movie your parents prevented you from seeing?
What didn't they prevent me from seeing? I was particularly crushed when my mom wouldn't let me see the Romeo + Juliet adaptation with Leonardo DiCaprio when I was an adolescent. Moms are, like, so totally cruel.

Your fetish scene:
Lena Olin in a bowler hat.

You’re directing a remake. Which one?
Not really a remake, but I would like to see someone do a really interesting adaptation of Edie Sedgewick's life--something more impressionistic and trippy than the completely mundane Factory Girl (my review here).

What makes you laugh?
The absurd.

Your life becomes a bio-pic. Who plays the role of you? And who directs?
Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sofia Coppola

A film that makes you say “Never again!”
Holocaust movies, war movies, movies about the oppressed/marginalized/etc.

The character who most sets you dreaming.
A pair, actually: Jesse and Celine from Before Sunrise

The absolute filmmaker, in your eyes?
Jean-Luc Godard, of course.

The actor or actress you’d like to have been.
Anna Karina

The last film you saw? With whom? How was it?
Family Life. With Dante. It was interesting, but a bit inscrutable and distant.

If you were to adapt a book?
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy (with my boyfriend), and Lolita (I know it's been done twice, but I want to do it again).

The craziest thing you’ve seen on the Internet?
A piano-playing cat. OK, not the craziest, but isn't it cute?

If someone called you a cinephile, how would you react?
Psssssssh.

DVD or more-or-less-legal downloading?
DVD, but really, nothing beats the cinema.

The masterpiece that everyone talks to you about but that you’ve never managed to see.
Citizen Kane. Yes. Really.

The last image?
Have to agree with Richard Brody here: Jean Paul Belmondo closing his eyelids with his hand.