Writer and director Olivier Assayas was born in Paris and grew up during the aftermath of the civil unrest of 1968. Assayas directed his first film, Nuit féline, in 1978, after a varied cinematographic apprenticeship that included working as an editor for Cahiers du Cinéma and ghostwriting episodes of Maigret for his father, the director Jacques Rémy. His 17 feature films include Clean (2004), Something in the Air (2012) and Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), and cover subjects as diverse as youthful rebellion, the life of a Protestant minister, and corporate battles over anime pornography. Assayas’s latest film, Personal Shopper, starring Kristen Stewart as a fashion PA trying to make contact with her dead twin, is out on 17 March.
1 | Music
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree
I’ve been listening to this nonstop for the last weeks. I’ve always been a fan, but for some reason I hadn’t been listening to his stuff for a while, and now all of a sudden this album is some of the greatest stuff he’s ever done. There’s something universal and very profound to it, and it’s something that echoes for a long time. I suppose it also has to do with the fact that I see modern music as poetry, and Nick Cave is one of the great poets in modern music. And I think he’s become the best film musician around: I thought what he and Warren Ellis did for the Jesse James movie was extraordinary; every single thing they’ve done, I’ve been impressed.
2 | Art
Agnes Martin, LA County Museum of Art
I had an epiphany when I was visiting the Agnes Martin show at the LA County Museum of Art last year. I’ve never been that big on minimalism - I’m fascinated by abstraction, but I’ve always been a little more on the side of figurative art, and here it’s something so pure, so minimal. To be confronted with the work of a lifetime, with those graceful, beautiful lines and squares - there’s something so spiritual about it. All of a sudden I understood exactly what minimal art was about, and I just fell in love. I’ve been thinking and rethinking about it. You see some art that lifts you up and you’re not sure why, and you’re just so grateful for the experience.
3 | Film
Because I was voting for the Oscars, I’ve been watching a lot of recent American films, and this is the one that stood out for me. It’s a modern western: it’s about these two brothers who rob banks, and then they are trailed by this cop who’s played by Jeff Bridges, who I’ve always been a fan of. It’s a very strong modern story with incredible acting, but I’m also really impressed by how a British film-maker [David Mackenzie] captures so accurately something that is so American. I suppose that has to do with the love I have for Johnny Cash, and it’s the one movie that does capture that kind of Americana.
4 | Book
Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School, by Stuart Jeffries
This is a really exciting book about the Frankfurt School, the school of philosophers including Adorno and Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin. Given what’s happening in terms of politics, I think we have to go back to basics and try to have a sharper grasp of how modern societies are evolving, especially when you’re an artist and trying to represent the world. I’ve been a major Adorno fan, but never really knew the story; I didn’t study philosophy at school – I studied French literature – and I’ve been fascinated by understanding the evolution of their thought. As a society, we’ve lost grasp of big ideas, and we seem to be stuck in a very materialistic world that we’re not so comfortable with. It’s like all philosophy: it deals with superficially complex ideas, but goes back to very simple emotions.
5 | Play
Hamlet, Théâtre Les Gémeaux, Sceaux
I’ve been working on my last two films with Lars Eidinger, possibly one of the most famous stage actors in Germany today, but I’d never seen him on stage. Everyone told me: “Wait till you see him, it’s quite an experience.” I saw him a few days ago here in Paris, where he was playing Hamlet in a Thomas Ostermeier production, and he’s really something. He is over the top, to put it mildly, but incredibly impressive: he’s like a rock star, he has this kind of charisma and this connection with the audience. It’s something I’ve never really seen in such a powerful way. It’s something that movies do not grasp: you don’t have that kind of dialogue with the audience – it’s more remote.
6 | Place
Marché des Enfants Rouges, Paris
This is one of the really old markets in central Paris, in the Marais area, near where I live. They reopened it maybe 10 years ago now, and it became more than a market: it’s a marketplace for the whole neighbourhood, with cafes and mini-restaurants and shops. It’s pretty unique in Paris to have something that feels so much like a village. On the weekend it’s crowded, but it’s really the good side of how central Paris is becoming gentrified, because here you have something that feels like a neighbourhood in ways that a lot of cities have lost connection with. It has a lot of young people, interesting shops, there’s a big bookstore ... There’s nothing like it anywhere else in Paris.
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