Interview How is your life today? - I live a pretty simple life. I get up early and have breakfast at a café. I want to be left alone. I need some peace and quiet. How do you react to people coming up to you in a public place, and all that excitement? - I hardly notice it. Some people close to me feel disgusted by it when they’re with me. I don’t feel so offended or threatened by it, more like people just react to me, that they’re thinking, “Oh, she’s one of those.” How do you deal with appreciation from strangers? - I don’t experience that often. Sometimes people come up and tell me they like me, but I don’t have to believe them. Does me asking questions about you unsettle you? - No, why should it? I try to be as honest as I can but I don’t show everything. I know I have an image, but that belongs to other people, it’s not mine. I’m not so focused on just me. I’m more focused on the general human experience. We often talk as if our private lives were separate from our public lives. We know that difference doesn’t really exist, it’s pure illusion. Therefore I can’t claim to have a private life, so I’m happy to answer your questions. At the same time there are contradictions in the life we call .private, which can make even me lie. Do you meet a lot of people nowadays? - Rather few. Mostly men, and maybe three or four women regularly. Why regularly? - I believe in regular routines. I don’t like visiting people, except my close friends that invite me on occasion. But there was a while when you did like meeting new people. - Yes, a lot of people wanted to meet me. Why is it that many of your friendships have ended? - It’s been mutual. Some lived very far away, so it’s been hard to stay in touch. I’ve always been terrible at keeping in touch. Others I’ve lost contact with as we had so different interests. It’s seems like your friendships have ended while your romantic relationships have endured? - Not all of my friendships have ended. Maybe they have been less important that my romantic relationships. But why do you say tit is like that for me? I’ve noted that a lot of people have disappeared from your life, mostly women. - Many men have disappeared from my life as well. I don’t see why my friendships should be less endurable than anyone else‘s. Falling in love is process. The other person becomes the object of our dreams. This makes us revaluate everything. I’d say that falling in love is the initial stage of a movement involving two people. Love is a fusion of two separate individuals. So is that why you believe that your romantic relationships are more important than your friendships? Falling in love is a search for your deepest authencity, an attempt to be wholly yourself. And thanks to the dialogue where both are searching for validation and approval, that’s made possible. Everyone needs understanding to escape from who they’ve been and who they really are. How do you fall in love? It’s possible to make somebody fall in love with you if you meet someone at the right moment and show him that you understand his innermost thoughts. That’s what awakens his longing. You encourage him and tell him that you want spend the rest of your life with him. Once you said that you let others initiate contact? - Yes. That seems strange. Do you never initiate contact? - No, never. That’s a very strange attitude. - But remember I’m already surrounded by people, mostly men. I have several men in my life. That must take up a lot of your time. - Yes. But you don’t like being alone when you’re not working. - I only like being alone on occasion. I used to like going out to dine by myself, to really feel my loneliness. Not anymore? - No. I remember an occasion three or four years ago when I had been looking forward to being alone. A female friend was out of town and I was staying in her flat. But I drank and got really pissed. That’s what I did with my loneliness. Weren’t you once going to write a love story? - Events in romance are so meaningless that it’s hard to write them down. The banality becomes obvious. But there was a year when I didn’t know what to write. I was searching for a subject for a novel. For a while it was a love story, and then it was a story about a pondering drifter. Another attempt to portray human loneliness? - Yes, but in a very different way. There is no connection between longings for love and actually falling in love. You don’t fall in love if you’re somewhat content with life. Falling in love happens when you’re absolutely depressed, when realizing how meaningless day-to-day life is. Are there any other signs that indicates that you are open to love? We don’t perceive other peoples happiness very strongly, but when we’re open to love we notice other people’s happiness in a way that hurts and makes us jealous. It can also be a foreboding of a catastrophe that threatens our existence. The person in love will identify with everyone else in love in a painful way. It’s a long chain connecting all lovers on earth. But what kind of relationship do you prefer? When the relationship makes both of us feel special and irreplaceable. But we’re not special and the person we love isn’t irreplaceable. You once said that your relationships been both on equal and unequal footing? - I’ve  said that. I’ve always made the first move. I didn’t see it as depending on my situation, rather because of the person I am. What is it to love someone one feels superior to, and does it create conflict? How is your relationship with X today? - I wouldn’t want to dine with him, because he bores me, but I still see him as a person. It was always I who led the conversations. It’s been like that with everyone. It was I who decided what kind of relationship it would be. You decided to end the relationship with X? - Yes, that was what was necessary to complete it. I can’t judge him for having been suffering too much and perhaps too little at the same time, but as you know he imagined most of his suffering. Unhappiness is both to suffer and imaging to be suffering. Anyway, he was unhappy. We don’t have much in common. That’s also why I chose him. It’s horrible to see people suffer but it doesn’t have to affect me.   You seem so surprisingly free from guilt. - Yes, that’s true. I never feel guilty, and I’m not either. Aren’t you scared of future generations judging you? - No, not at all. Not that I think the judgement will be mild. It would never occur to me to destroy any letters or documents about my private life or about it happend. I could predict X. I knew him and that was my goal. Is there something you’d like to add? - In a way interviews are frustrating because there’s so much to say. That’s what I feel every time I give an interview. But this will probably be sufficient as a portrait. The dialogue in the film consists of rewritten quotations from the following books: Innamoramento e amore by Francesco Alberoni A Lover’s Discourse: Fragment by Roland Barthes Self-portraits - interviews with Jean-Paul Sartre. Sur "L'Idiot de la famille", Simone de Beavoir interroge Jean-Paul Sartre, Autoportarit á soixante-dix ans <<