"This is art concealing art. On the face of it, the film is a gentle satire of French bourgeois life on holiday. There is no story, just Hulot (Jacques Tati himself) drifting innocently through a holiday resort, leaving a trail of confusion behind him. The gags are wonderful, apparently effortless, the situations natural. In reality, the film is the extraordinary creation of a man obsessed with perfection. Each move, each image was planned in detail by Tati until the gags were immaculate; the tennis ball that bounces off the head of the serious little girl curtsying to her elders, the paint pot that floats out to sea, then back on the opposite side of the beached fishing boat; everything apparently natural, everything the product of intense creativity."

"I don’t really know how to go into detail about it; the story is so intense, and you’re not made to feel a certain way towards these characters. You see this mom who’s kind of a b—- and doesn’t really care about her youngest daughter, and you see this older sister who’s a b—-… especially at the end, you don’t really feel sorry for these people. I had a list of films that my theater teacher gave me, when I was about 14 or 15. One of the things he always told the class was you should be watching one film per week, to study other actors and study the language of film. Fat Girl just happened to be one of the films on the list."

"“I really relate to the particular type of mental instability that Dostoyevsky describes in pretty much all of his work. A character starts talking, and things start getting out of control and become increasingly animated, intense and disturbing. It reads like an extreme version of how I feel whenever I have to interact with humans. The Idiot is probably my favourite of his works, because I love Nastasya Filipovna, Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin, Rogozhin… I think a lot of my friends think I’m a bit like Nastasya! Anyway, it’s the most cartoonish and absurd of everything I’ve read by Dostoyevsky, and the best distillation of insanity as a virtue. A Baz Luhrmann-esque treatment of this book would make an incredible film.”"

"Satrapi grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and its aftermath; Persepolis is the story of her childhood. Through Marji’s youthful (though not-always-innocent) eyes and mind, we see a turbulent moment in history unfold, and we witness the tremendous impact that local and global events and politics can have on even the most intimate moments of personal lives. We experience with Marji her day-to-day dreams and struggles, from family strife to wrestling with religious faith and custom. We’re swept up in her parents’ anxieties and her grandmother’s memories of an utterly different era. And we get a very real sense of what it was like to be a woman in Iran during this intense time of cultural and political transition."