We've been asked for a long time to remake our movies, but we have always refused because we are not interested 
Agn猫s Jaoui is one of France's most successful female directors. She also writes and stars in her movies, alongside real-life husband Jean-Pierre Bacri. In Look At Me, she's playing a choral teacher while he's a highly cantakerous but also highly successful novelist. Her 2000 pic The Taste Of Others received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
It's refreshing to see a movie where none of the characters are particularly likeable. Was that what you had in mind when you wrote the script?
Our goal when we [Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri] are writing is to make our characters as precise as possible, so you can understand them or identify with them. As we wanted to speak about the theme of power, it was very difficult to make nice people. What we noticed is that, when people have to deal with power, they are not very charming. Our goal was to describe people where, frankly, we noticed that they are rarely brave or heroic.
Why choose the world of publishing as the backdrop for the story and not movies?
Because our point of view - and in fact we failed - was not to criticise the milieu. If we had chosen cinema, everybody would have thought we were saying that cinema was a bull**** milieu. For us, it was only to describe the process of accepting power, taking the leadership. In fact, in the beginning, the character of 脡tienne [Bacri] was an architect, but then we decided to meet some architects and... [gives bored expression]. It's always a problem for us to choose the milieu. We don't 'invent' characters, and as we are living in a bourgeois milieu, it's easier to speak about what we know. A definition of an anti-Semitic joke is a Jewish joke told by a non-Jewish person, and I would have the same feeling writing about a milieu I'm not from.
Did you ever worry that your husband, Jean-Pierre, might be too nice to play the part of 脡tienne?
I was a little bit afraid, because Jean-Pierre is very sympathetic, especially for French audiences. Every time they see him on screen, they begin to laugh - even if he doesn't say anything. They like him very much. We were afraid that they would excuse his character's behaviour in the film because he was Jean-Pierre.
You've said that you make films about people in human relationships. Do you think there are unique things about the French sensibility, or are your themes universal?
This is now the fourth country that I've travelled to with this film, and very often people say to me, "So French!" So I ask why. In the United States and even in Germany, they say it's because the part of culture is so important. For example, in the States they say that it would be absolutely impossible for someone to recognise a writer in the street, because a writer is only on TV, say, twice a year. So I would ask the question to you, why is it so French?
For me, it's so French because it's an intelligent movie about real - albeit bourgeois - people.
It's so nice! I thought every English person hated French people.
Not true. We like French movies. Actually, I thought the film was universal. For example, the women in the film change, while the men keep on repeating their mistakes. Do you think that's true to life?
No! First, I'm very distrustful with "Women are..." and "Men are...". For us, we were speaking about power, and until now it's mostly the men who have power. But you know - with the famous Maggie - that when the woman has the power, she can be worse than men. I think the women in this movie are more like victims, so maybe we identify a little bit more. But - and I'm contradicting myself here - it's also true that men have, maybe, more difficulty to change.
Music is an integral part of the movie...
Music is very important for me. Sometimes music and songs can prevent me from liking movies much more than the image. I remember, for example, Billy Elliot - I wanted to like it, but then there was this music! There is a convention in American movies to put music every time a woman is going to kiss a man, or it's a moving moment [sticks finger down throat]. I'm going out of the movie at this point! It's very powerful, of course, and has a big influence, so I chose music that I liked, and that I've sang for a long time, especially the music from Schubert.
Hollywood is often remaking successful French movies - usually badly. Has there been interest in your work?
We've been asked for a long time to remake our movies, but we have always refused because we are not interested. When I was in Los Angeles for the Oscars - when The Taste Of Others was nominated - a lot of people asked me to do movies there, but I refused. If you want to see our movies, you will have to see them in French!
Look At Me is released in UK cinemas on Friday 5th November 2004.
