“I believe in work. I believe in working hard. Picasso made about 150 sketches before painting ‘Guernica,’” says Jeunet on his pre-production work.

The French director plays a game of give and take, literally, in his movie-making process—adding some of his own personal quirks to Mathilde’s characterization and taking a memento from the set of each of his films. For example, Mathilde’s superstitious nature is not part of her original characterization, but is instead, a detail added by Jeunet, who confesses to having been a very superstitious youth himself.

To remember Engagement, Jeunet took a beautifully crafted wooden hand that was used by one of the actors. It is a welcome addition to past keepsakes, which include the pig lamp from Amélie and an alien prop from Alien: Resurrection. He speculates that the alien may be useful in frightening thieves.

Yet, Jeunet is a bit of the temperamental “arteest” and finds it hard to speak about his style, which is known for having every frame look like a painting. He explains his process as driven simply by instinct, though he does admit to finding inspiration in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, two classics by notoriously perfectionist auteurs.

Although A Very Long Engagement has been a huge box office success in France and has generated Oscar talk in some quarters, Jeunet does not wish to raise his hopes too high. With the recent court ruling and Franco-mocking critics everywhere, awards may be elusive. But if he is nominated for an Oscar, Jeunet expresses some minor worries, “[Then] I’m in deep shit. My suit is too small.”