The costume designer they hired drew every single outfit to fit in a progression of colors throughout the film. It felt like it was coming from the head and not from the physicality, so I was a little worried. It was a week before shooting and we didn’t have the clothes yet. Finally, we decided to find someone else, and Kieślowski said something to me: “Don’t worry about the clothes, I’m just interested in your intimacy.” And the first day of shooting was the first scene you see in the film: me under the sheets with the camera very close, crying in bed. I thought, okay, intimacy, I get what he means.

But I don’t think Kieślowski knew that much about acting. And it didn’t matter. He knew when it was right, and he knew when he could go further. When there was a technical problem he’d do it again, but for acting he wouldn’t repeat. He would make me rehearse, like, five times and do one take afterward. He’d sometimes say, “Why isn’t it exactly like the rehearsal?” and I’d tell him that each take is something new, I’m discovering as I’m going, just as you do. We had a few laughs about it, but I was also disappointed sometimes that he wouldn’t understand that he had to trust me on that.

But it was the subject matter that touched me so, because one of my friends had lost a child and a husband [like Binoche’s character in Blue]. What Kieślowski said to me, and I found it so interesting, was: “No tears. Never any tears.” I doubted that, especially when my character finds out the news about the deaths, but as we were going I began to understand. On the last take, the last shot of the film, I told him to let me do what I wanted. I said that I would like to smile. He said no, and I said let me try, and he said, “Okay, let’s try it.” So I did it and we kept the shot, and at the screening he said to me, “You were right.”