Biographie

23 décembre 1962 · Da Nang, Vietnam

Member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996

[press conference for La passion de Dodin Bouffant (2023) at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival] I haven't really adapted the book - it's more a case of drawing very free inspiration from it. In the book there's some magnificent pages on the art of cooking and food. I've told a story which actually precedes the book; it's a tale of love between Eugénie and Dodin. I wanted to strike a balance in my film between these two things. I wanted to depict a parallel story where you also focus a lot on the art of cooking.

[Cannes press conference for La passion de Dodin Bouffant (2023)] New technology is just a tool; it's a matter of how you use it. It's not a threat. When you are making a movie, what you need to know is the language of cinema, this is very important because you cannot only use cinema as a tool to illustrate a story or a theme but it's important that you give the audience the feeling of the movement of cinema - how to create something that looks like an animal in the jungle, that walks beautifully in the jungle. For this you need to know the language of cinema - the specific language of cinema. If you can create an emotion that only comes from the art of cinema, you are doing something great - you are making a movie. If you create emotion by only relying on for instance, the death of a child, it's not enough - it's just experience, it's not expression. When you make a movie you have to know what is this art, and this is the most important thing. Because there are two steps; one is when you making the scenario - you are building the story and the theme. You know that you have already this. Then when you go to the moment when you have to film it, it's another thing, it's the bigger thing. So it's important to know this.