"Last but not least, I would just also mention a modern film. I was between Force Majure, this Swedish film, but then I thought, “Okay, let’s leave Europe. Let’s go to South America.” The Argentinian film Wild Tales was a film that I enjoyed a lot because it’s different episodes all dealing with revenge. One episode more clever and entertaining than the other. I think [it has] one of the funniest, surreal wedding scenes in film history. Probably my favorite wedding scene in a film ever. Very, very Latin American. Very brave. Muchos cojones. Incredibly smart and clever because revenge is told through so many different angles. Wonderful performances with the lovely Ricardo Darin, who is one of my favorite actors. Leonardo Sbaraglia — another wonderful Argentinian actor. A very powerful, fresh and wonderful film."

"I watched it, I think, right before we started writing this movie too. I don’t know if it’s because my mom is Swedish, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Sweden, but I love Lukas Moodysson’s Together. I love the realness of it and the people trying to raise a family in this commune-type environment. I think my favorite scene is the breakfast scene with people coming down, and they’re naked from the waist down. I still have that image in my head. It’s just a perfect sense of reality and shock, and it’s not shocking to them at all, but it’s obviously shocking to the viewer. But not in a way that’s it’s going for an effect. They’re all eating breakfast and you’re seeing everyone’s pubic hair."

"This is generally known as Bergman’s most personal film, a complete masterpiece and triumphant study of childhood and the human condition, but I came to it by accident. This is a bit embarrassing, but I was about fifteen and I thought it was the movie adaptation of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. To a highly untrained teenager’s eye, there are just enough similarities—like messed-up bourgeois family dynamics as seen through the prism of siblings—that I must have thought, “Well, I guess the whole thing just takes place over Christmas now. And they changed the names. And everyone’s Swedish.” Best cinematic mix-up of my life. Even better than that time in college when I drunkenly watched the second disc of Magnolia first and thought it made total sense."

"There’s a recent film, the Swedish movie Force Majeure. I just thought it was brilliant. I’ve been married for 17 years myself, and I thought the way he captured this relationship, all the tension, I thought it was amazing. And what I also loved about it in a cinematic sense was the way he shot it. The fact that he stays wide; he doesn’t do any coverage in the scenes. It took me a long time to realize that that was what he was doing. The way he blocked the scenes was so exquisite and so organic, if you will. If you go back, suddenly you go, “Oh my god, he’s just letting the scene roll.” There are very few cuts within the scene. It’s beautiful. I thought it was a great movie, and I thought I should put something recent in there. [laughs]"

“Very apt for now, because I think it’s just come out on DVD. I’m scared of horror films, and hardly ever see them, but I was just so haunted by the scene at the end at the swimming pool, about which I will say no more because my brain is still trying to work out what happened there. It just shows how, if you’ve got a really low budget, and a really serious intent, you can make people feel uncomfortable. It’s a weird, spooky, melancholy Swedish love story about vampires, which is a big subject at the moment, but it’s hard to imagine a better vampire film. So that would be my number one choice — delightful, strange and disjointing. “That will be the only horror movie on any list of mine. The first time I saw The Exorcist, I had to sleep with the lights on for about four years, so horror is not for me.”