Biographie

Wrote her first novel "L'Homme Facile" at the age of 17, but was barred from the French system of book classification, which classified it as 18+ readership.

She hails Les communiants (1963) as being the main reason why she became a director.

Serves as a master teacher of film at Columbia University and the School of Visual Arts in New York for a program called "On Set With French Cinema" (Fall 2003).

Considers David Cronenberg another filmmaker to have a similar approach to sexuality in film.

Suffered a stroke in 2004 which paralysed the left side of her body. She was hospitalized for 5 months as a result.

The problem is that censors create the concept of obscenity. By supposedly trying to protect us they form an absurd concept of what is obscene.

It's a joke - if men can't desire liberated women, then tough. Does it mean they can only desire a slave? Men need to question the roots of their own desire. Why is it that historically men have this need to deny women to be able to desire them?

For me, the outrage is that the world needs to know about the loss of virginity. There is such guilt associated with the fact that you want to make love, that you demand that your lover speaks words of love, whether he means them or not.

It's not just freedom to do a particular act. It's not consumerism. If you think of an orgy or falling in love, everyone would rather fall in love because it's really transcendental. The problem is that all governments and all religions have always been determined to make sex something dirty. Religion is afraid of the power of sex - because a person who can find the transfiguration of sex in her life is no longer a person who can be directed.

If you want to preserve your virginity, it's about not wanting to belong to the human species. To make love is not just to have the pleasure of flesh, but to have the pleasure of flesh escaping flesh. The sexual act involves a mental transfiguration, too.