Everyday Ghosts: Olivier Assayas on Personal Shopper

I use my phone like everybody else. It’s an extension of our memory, of our imagination. I’ve made a couple movies that were more like period pieces—even a film like Sils Maria is in a time zone of its own—but this film was an opportunity to deal with modern characters in the modern world. Looking things up on the Internet when you’re doing something else—it’s so much a part of how we function. It’s part of our world in ways that are getting stranger and stranger; it’s a visualization of our thought process. So from the moment I started making this movie about someone who’s alone, someone who’s lonely and in the process of reconstructing herself, that reconstruction was part of her inner dialogue, and part of her inner dialogue is externalized on the Internet and in images on a phone.

I grew up in the countryside, and I watched movies on TV. A lot of my education in classic cinema came from stuff I saw on a small black-and-white screen. I would go to the suburban Parisian theaters and watch mainstream movies. I remember all the kids of my generation discovering Cinerama movies like Ben-Hur. I think my first memory of cinema must be of seeing Ben-Hur when I was around six; it was very impressive and was on such a grand scale. When I was a teenager, I could relate more seriously to what I genuinely loved in cinema and what genuinely attracted me. It had to do with independent American films of the seventies that were connected to the counterculture, a lot of post–Easy Rider stuff. They had a sense of freedom. When I was a teenager, the energy of the French nouvelle vague had already passed. When I was growing up in the seventies, it was a different world, and what captured those times was that kind of cool, hip, semi-experimental independent film.

Writing about films was an accident. I always wanted to make films. I didn’t go to film school; I studied French literature and painting, but cinema I discovered on my own. I started making short films, and I started thinking there was something not completely mature about my understanding of cinema. So the opportunity of writing about films forced me to think about cinema and learn about it in a deeper way than I hadbefore. In that sense, I’m kind of self-taught when it comes to theory and history.

My filmmaking is generated by my relationship with other arts. The reason I’ve chosen cinema, as opposed to painting, which could have been an option, is the way it records human emotion and its collective nature, which is extremely important to me. Also, the documentary aspect of cinema: whatever story you’re telling, it needs to be some kind of reality in front of your own eyes.

My favorite part must be editing, because it has the essential qualities of writing but without the doubts or the sense of being out of focus. When you get to the editing room, it’s done, it’s finished, you have all your material, and you can write with it. I just love it. And gradually the film takes shape like a painting in front of your eyes, but you don’t have the pressure of finishing on time or getting the shot or losing the light or the crew being on strike.

A recent film I really like is Toni Erdmann. I’ve always loved the work of Maren Ade. I’ve seen her previous film, which I loved, but I think Toni Erdmann is on another dimension. Once in a while something comes up that has this strength and originality and is daring. That’s what keeps movies exciting.

I thought it would be difficult, but it was actually extremely pleasurable. I really liked the process. I never function with cowriters; I don’t like the dynamics of it. But here, with Polanski, it made complete sense. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted, and he listens. It’s his way of working, so he’s familiar with the process, and it was very simple, obvious, and pleasurable for me. I don’t think I would do it again any time soon, but this one time I loved it.