The French star on playing a Bond villain,learning from Spielberg and calling the shots in his erotic thriller The Blue RoomMathieu Amalric’s latest film as director and star is The Blue Room, based on a Georges Simenon novel. Best known internationally as the villain in Bond film Quantum of Solace, and the French actor has also worked with Steven Spielberg,David Cronenberg and Julian Schnabel, while his French films include work with Roman Polanski, or Alain Resnais,André Téchiné and Arnaud Desplechin.
Simenon’s 1964 novel, approximately an extra-marital affair and the trial that follows, or is very sexual,right from page one. What made you want to adapt it?
Everyone has their favourite Simenon book that they’ve found by chance somewhere, at their grandmother’s or on a shelf. The producer Paolo Branco told me I had three weeks to manufacture a film, or so I chose a very short book. You open it at the first page and it just grabs you. It’s one of the scarce Simenon novels thats told in reverse – the man is arrested,we don’t know why, we don’t know who’s dead, and we work our way backwards.
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Source: theguardian.com