Does your lifestyle allow you to read as much as you would like to?

Absolutely not! I’m running after my life… I buy book, I love bookstores. From time to time, I succeed to read, otherwise they follow me whenever I travel and on holidays.

Is there a particular book that has affected how you lead your life?

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez that I read when I was fourteen, when Balthus invited my parents and I at the villa Médicis. Was it because I was in such an extraordinary house, an immense bedroom, with windows opening on such a beautiful garden, the solemnity of the place, the sound of footsteps on the sublime tiled floors, the long hallways, and Balthus’ atelier which seemed like such a mysterious place?
This extremely rich book retraces the history of the Buendía family over generations (including the character of Ursula who lives a hundred years) and its epic story mingles magic and realism. This vivid and visual writing touched me, and maybe when you’re a teenager you’re even more inspired by an enchanting universe?
One Hundred Years of Solitude never left me, even in the most melancholic moments of life. Talking about it today make me want to dive with Aureliano in the destiny of the imaginary city of Macondo.

What is the most liberating book you have read?

It is a gift from my mother: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” The study over the place of women in our society: financial and emotional independence, freedom, the right to access birth-control, sexuality. This is an important book in my life, it troubled me when I first read it and every once in a while I leaf through it, open a page and read it. My mother, Agnès Varda, gave me a deeply structuring and feminist education, while my father, Jacques Demy, offered me an open door to the world of poetry and fantasy.

What is the most harrowing book you have ever read?

Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, an important and overwhelming book transcribing the stories from the movie he directed.

Which fictional heroine would you like to be?

I don’t see myself as a fictional heroine! I’d rather imagine myself as a puzzle made of my own life experience and those of many women, famous or not, that I ran into through literature or in real life.

What is the best place to read?

There is no ideal place, you just have to have an open mind and a shut phone, you need to accept that reading demands a certain enjoyable focus and the courage not to “lose yourself” in social media. You can start a book and get back to it later, but I realize that our lives are fleeting and that everything is going so fast. Today, I like to start and try to finish the book quickly, to keep the stories, the emotions with me…

Are you more romance novel or adventure novel?

What about when there’s both?

Do you prefer long novels or short stories?

I don’t know, I love reading short stories and a long novel can really catch me. When I was a teenager, I loved reading long novels by Pearl Buck or Rosamond Lehman! The length of short stories enables to start and finish the story in one sitting. I like the short stories of Carson McCullers or Anna Gavalda.

Which book would you like to see adapted to film?

La Carte postale by Anne Berest, a thrilling story that carried me away from the first pages! From a postcard she finds, she retraces her family history up to the beginning of the century. She also shows how persecuted her Jewish family had been, how to survive after having lost some of your relatives in the concentration camps. Anne Berest starts investigating and little by little finds answers to her questions: who wrote this card and why and when? The grandmother’s silence which surrounds the family overwhelms me, this dialogue between mother and daughter moves me a lot.

The title of a book you always offer as a gift?

I’ll give you two: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes and Three Strong Women by Marie N’Diaye.