Sexuality, gender, relationships, and crime have found a home to flourish in the dark, cinematic world of French filmmaker François Ozon.

In features like Swimming Pool, Water Drops On Burning Rocks, and Criminal Lovers, Ozon showed us gritty aspects of human behavior when other filmmakers wouldn't dare. Even his sole foray into Technicoloresque musicals, Eight Women, centered on a murder and plenty of figural backstabbing.

His latest film, Time To Leave, shows a 31-year old gay fashion photographer (Melvil Poupaud) who's diagnosed with a terminal cancer and only has a few months to live. On a recent visit to Los Angeles, Ozon had plenty to say about working with divas, shared the film that influenced him to become a director, and explained why portraying sex on screen is important to him yet labeling his own sexuality is not.

AfterElton: Why is it important for you to show such a wide range of sexuality in your films?
Francois Ozon: Because I think when you show the body and the sexual behavior, people don't lie, and I think when there are some scenes with dialogue, people just pretend to be what they are not. Suddenly when you ask two characters to have sex, they do what they are and then they show their real feelings and emotions. And for me it's important to find the truth of a character during the journey of a film.

AE: What films influenced you growing up?
FO: I think I became a cinephile very early because my parents loved cinema and they let me see many films which were maybe forbidden for children (laughs).

I think one of the important films was by (Roberto) Rossellini I saw when I was about ten or eleven on television a night my parents were out--Germany Year Zero. It's a Neo-realistic movie made in Berlin just after the war (WWII) and it's the story of a young boy who tries to survive and find some money for his family. And the young boy at the end commits suicide and it was very tragic and it was so different from the kind of movie I was used to seeing as a child. It was the opposite of a Walt Disney movie. And I think when I saw this film I understood how a movie could be strong and touch me as a young boy of eleven. And I think it's at this moment I realized maybe one day I would become a film director.

AE: Your films show a wide range of sexuality, you define yourself as a gay man right?
FO: No, I don't define myself. It's very American to define oneself. I don't need to define myself because I don't want to be one thing. I want to be open-minded and you never know what will happen in your life if you know already.

I think it's always very sad when you hear some gay people saying, “I just want to have sex with this kind of man.” It's always surprising to be suddenly touched by a younger man and after by an older one, black after Chinese.

I like the idea that many things can happen in your life and if you know already exactly what you desire, it's very boring, and I think the desires change during all your life. Maybe I will have a family in ten years, I don't know, and children.

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