Paris

Utilizing a combination of professional actors and man-on-the-street interviews, Raymond Depardon creates a film around a director's search for the perfect leading lady. The main problem is that the filmmaker (Luc Delahaye) doesn't really know what his next film will be about, let alone what kind of woman should be his star. He hires a female casting director (Sylvie Peyre) and heads for the streets of Paris. In the Saint Lazare Train Station, the filmmaker begins interviewing a broad cross-section of women who prove to be surprisingly candid in response to his intimate questions. "We began by making an in-depth study of mass transit locations at dawn and dusk. The most crowded times are between 7 and 9 AM and 5:30 and 7 PM around the winter solstice. Starting at first light, the crew was lying in wait to film the crowds. We tried to capture the natural sound of the city in all its richness: its different acoustics, the diversity of its sources and the wealth of its noises. The sounds of train engines, footsteps, passing motorbikes, snippets of conversation, whistles, drowned out by echoes or picked out in isolation, are heard in the same balance as they are in real life." (Claudine Nougaret and Raymond Depardon)