Yeah, what you do is very idealized...in a tragic way. (Laughs) Did you ever read The White Hotel?

No...who wrote it?

D.M. Thomas. It’s very psychological, very Freudian, and there’s a lot of imagery that reminds me so much of what you do in your films. People have been trying to adapt this book into a film forever but when I saw this movie I just thought if anybody could pull this off it would be you. There’s a lot of sex in it, too. (Laughs)

Oh, good! (Laughs) The deeper you get into psychological things, the more sex is involved in the whole thing. In this movie there’s a lot obviously that is sexual, but there’s something that ties it all in. Sex, when it’s not the act, has this strong capacity to make us wonder things, to make us create things in our minds. Sex as an instinct makes us wonder, makes us ask questions – and they’re always private questions that we ask ourselves without anybody listening, and we also answer ourselves without anybody hearing or knowing what’s been said. What we do after can or cannot be different, but we all have this drive and this instinct to create fantasies – to look at people who are by us or work with us and create sexual fantasies. And it’s a great gift, a right, that we have do to that. My instinct has a lot to do with the process of writing, because when we write we wonder what would this person think, what would happen, and they’re really tied together – the forces of wonder and instinct that make us create fantasies are also the same for a writer. That’s what brought the two characters together [in the film], the writer and Lucia, because they both have this instinct in different ways, and I wanted to put them together in this wild sexual relationship that they have.

Right, right - it’s the juxtaposition of the one who will act on it and the one who internalizes it and releases it with writing.

Yes!

I don’t know people like Lucia - I don’t know that they really exist! (Laughs) Somebody who would act on something that was so primal, so instinctive.

I know one person like that...sort of. (Laughs)

So, are you going do a romantic comedy? I keep pursuing it because I think you’d do it so interestingly.

Yes, of course, at some point. (Laughs) It’s waiting. Especially now.... Something really interesting happened with the last film, Lovers of the Arctic Circle. One of the lead characters, Anna, died at the end. And in this movie I wanted to bring her back, to give her another opportunity and another life with more life. That character Anna is based on my sister, whom I wanted to bring along into this next brighter thing. But when Lorenzo appeared, I changed a lot of the way Lucia was to accommodate him. At first, I thought of having the same actress who played Anna, Najwa Nimri, play Lucia. Then, with Lorenzo, I realized that it couldn’t be – there had to be a completely different foil for him, so I thought of this person that I know.... This person whom I thought of while writing the new Lucia was also coincidentally named Anna! Life has all these weird coincidences and I was very surprised at them.

Yeah - it’s almost like there isn’t really any such thing as a coincidence - that these things that happen are just life.

That’s it. But the thing is that this person who became Lucia was my sister Anna, who died last April in a car accident. I want to make a movie about her now. She was a painter. I have to tell you, though, that the next one is not gonna be a comedy – I’m not in a place where I can do that yet. I need to come to terms with what’s happened with my sister first, and then the comedy will happen.

Are you working on it now, the story about your sister?

Yes. Even here, right now, I’m writing notes.

Has it been inspirational to be here at Sundance?

Yes, of course! Seeing the mountains and the incredible beauty of nature here, going to brunch with Robert Redford, even riding on the bus.… There’s going to be a lot of things coming to me when I’m with all these other filmmakers. And every time I go to a place that isn’t one I know, there are always wheels turning.

Have you been approached to work on an American film? There seems to be a lot of cross-over recently, especially with Spanish-language directors working on English-language movies.

Yes, a couple of things have come up.... I wouldn’t reject an offer but I probably won’t do anything soon. It’s very possible. Every movie I’ve made, I’ve tried to be in a different place with my characters – like in Lovers of the Arctic Circle set where it was or having Sex and Lucia on this remote island. So why not America? Maybe it’ll be somewhere like this [points to mountains outside the window] making the next one.

Sex and Lucia is released in the U.S. on July 12, 2002. www.sexandluciafilm.com.