It's easy to dismiss things that talk about innocence and sincerity as being silly or unrealistic. Some think that Cinderella should give her stepmother a head butt, be "a heroine hands on the hips", figure very in vogue today. But I didn't want a heroine who was strong just because she would, in a way, borrow masculine features, because she had a pistol or a bow in her hands. The real challenge is to prove that kindness and generosity can be attractive, charismatic, sexy. We live in a very cynical world, a postmodern world where everything has to be ironic. But I think this permanent irony makes things age faster. Finally, by choosing to do in the classic, I show myself original (laughs)!

It's so much better to make movies that help light up life!

I  tell me there's no point in making pessimistic films, films that discourage. A film must open paths, indicate paths that everyone can take.

Freedom is an “inherent and inalienable” right of Americans, as is the “pursuit of happiness”. Note the distinction, proof of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. The Declaration of Independence guarantees freedom, but when it comes to happiness, only the right to seek it is protected. It is an emotion difficult to quantify and extremely fleeting. It can arise from a simple ray of sunshine, a perfume carried by the breeze in a busy street, a well-constructed sentence, a succulent sauce, a tender memory or a passage from the Ode to Joy.

I cannot thank Hugo Gélin enough for thinking of me (for Marriage in Mendoza). It feels good to make people laugh. It is a turning point in my career. Since the time my mother said to me: "But why don't you ever do comedies?"

In Europe, entertainment is separated from so-called serious subjects. Whereas Americans do not practice this dichotomy.  According to them, you can both be engaged and show humor.

Knowing how to make people laugh is a gift. Those who own it are national treasures. I love them, I respect them, I need them. Laughter is the best therapy; to play comedy, the greatest of disciplines. It is an exercise which has the precision of Swiss watchmaking and which cannot suffer from improvisation.

I make films to make my teenage dreams come true, to do myself good and if possible do good to others. For many, cinema is writing; for me, it will always be a show, where it is forbidden to annoy your world or to address only a part of the audience.  Like all autodidacts, I hear  first to convince.

Why this enthusiasm for comedies? Yesterday, their simple mission was to amuse the French, but today, I believe they are looking after them. We live in a violent, cruel world. A comedy at the cinema, at the end of the week, acts as an antidepressant ... which we can then consume without moderation, at home, à la carte, while savoring one of these DVDs that we have already seen several times but which we know will undoubtedly represent a pleasant parenthesis, a kind of balm or oasis in this gloomy environment where smiles have deserted (.)
If "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis" worked so well, it is because it touched people with its tenderness, its humanity, and that spectators of all ages, of all conditions, found themselves there. It was the same for "I find you very beautiful" by Isabelle Mergault with Michel Blanc.

I like it when cinema transcends everyday realism, that it brings a part of poetry. When he magnifies life!

Films that do good do not prevent you from thinking.
Leaving a room with depression does not guarantee that you have experienced a strong moment.

I am for wonder, for romanticism. I don't want to make a cold, brutal cinema, that doesn't interest me. It's too easy. Cynicism, no thanks. Watching a movie or listening to a song is like taking an antidepressant. It changes your internal chemistry and it gives you the energy to keep going.
Cinema has saved my life many times. In turn, I want to make euphoric, exhilarating films. I want it to be alive and there to be a lot of love.

I have the feeling that it was a very good harvest of films. I just regret that there aren't more comedies in the competition. This is probably linked to the distrust of distributors, who fear that the Cannes exposure will harm their film, and that is a shame.
And then there is a snobbery that a comedy cannot be a great movie. But that's not true: there is a blossoming of incredible comedies today, in the United States at least. I would have liked to discover what this genre produces in the rest of the world.

Comedy isn't all about joking and making faces!
It's rhythm, too.

There are three important things that one must achieve when making films.
The first is entertainment, you have to entertain the public. already to arrive at that, it is not bad.
The second is to educate.
Finally the third objective is to uplift, to take people to a higher sphere to inspire them.
I call these my three Es: Entertainment, Education, Elevation.

We have the right to make auteur films that are also intended to reach the public. Author's film, this is not an insult. By no means does that mean a movie that should target very few people.
Cinema is a popular art, perhaps the one with the greatest palette of different genres, and all can exist, from mainstream, light popcorn cinema, to elitist and demanding, difficult films. In my eyes, the notion of author goes from one end of the chain to the other.
There are author popcorn movies.
 

I deplore this tendency to intellectualize everything and to gargle endless discussions about cinema.
Whether it is the "Children of Paradise", the "Godfather" or a Fellini, they are above all entertainment ...