"Cinema is about resurrection. Cinema is about dealing with your own ghosts and bringing them to life. Cinema can explore your subconscious and your memories, but mostly it allows what is lost to come back."
Olivier Assayas (born 1955) is a French director.
Assayas was exposed to show business at a young age through his father, screenwriter Jacques Rémy. His debut film, Cold Water, was screened in the Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Since then, he has racked up a filmography comprised of slow-burning, dramatic movies that tend towards the surreal and psychological. He's been identified as one of the contributors to the New French Extremity wave of provocative films made at the Turn of the Millennium.
Filmography:
- Cold Water (1994)
- Irma Vep (1996)
- Late August, Early September (1998)
- Sentimental Destinies (2000)
- Demonlover (2002)
- Clean (2004)
- Paris, je t'aime: "Quartier des Enfancts Rouges" (2006)
- Boarding Gate (2007)
- Summer Hours (2008)
- Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
- Personal Shopper (2016)
- Non-Fiction (2018)
- Wasp Network (2019)
- Irma Vep (2022): A remake of his earlier film
Tropes about his works and career:
- Meta Fiction: He likes to comment about the art of making art and the drama that often goes into it:
- Irma Vep is about a doomed remake of a silent film.
- Clouds of Sils Maria sees two women act in a play.
- One of the leads in Non-Fiction is an actress with an imperfect personal life.
- Production Posse:
- Directed Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper, and Non Fiction.
- Sils Maria and Shopper also starred Kristen Stewart, and were major factors in her reputation's turn to "serious film actress" post Twilight. She then cameoed in Irma Vep.
- Romance on the Set: Assayas was married for some years to Maggie Cheung, whom he had cast in the titular role of Irma Vep. She starred in Clean under his direction after their divorce.
- Signature Style: He is fond of filming in several different languages, and then deliberately refusing to subtitle, in order to increase the audience's alienation from the characters.
