On Geena Davis (a rare tangent into the living, precipitated by his memories of Oliver Reed on Cutthroat Island): «Perhaps in a long laundry list of ludicrous events I have
witnessed on film sets, the one I most treasure is watching my leading lady having her makeup and hair assiduously attended to between each take of one scene.
But the
film's pulsating sense of life and self - discovery,
set against the backdrop of an underprivileged black neighborhood
on the outskirts of Paris, can't be forgotten, especially for its discovery of Karidja Toure as Marieme, the girl whose coming of age we
witness in such painfully authentic fashion.