Benoît Jacquot, the Director Who Loves Women "THE things that I prefer in this world, my reasons for living, are books and women," the French director Benoît Jacquot said. For me the cinema is the best way to unite them. His new film, "Farewell, My Queen," is adapted from a prizewinning 2002 book by the French writer Chantal Thomas. Mr. Jacquot wrote the screenplay with Gilles Taurand. The movie, which opened this year's Berlin Film Festival, is to open on Friday in New York. Set in the final days before the outbreak of the French Revolution, it revolves around a romantic triangle of Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger), her confidante Madame de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen) and Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux), a servant whose task it is to read to the queen. Mr. Jacquot's penchant for literature has inspired projects including a screen adaptation of an unfinished book by Marivaux ("Marianne," from 1997, starring Ms. Ledoyen) and a movie about the Marquis de Sade ("Sade," with Daniel Auteuil in the lead role, in 2000). His passion for women has led him to center films around many of France's great actresses, often at early stages in their careers, resulting in a body of work that can be read as a continuing meditation on human desire. He said he knew from the first page that he wanted to adapt Ms. Thomas's book into a film, intrigued by how it focuses on a single point of view, a strategy he has employed in other films that follow young women grappling with dramatic events in brief spans. The book's narrator was a middle-aged Sidonie looking back on the events of her youth; Mr. Jacquot has her grappling with them in the present. "I think one of the things that attracted Benoît is that the story is told from an entirely feminine point of view," Ms. Thomas said by telephone from Paris. I think that desire is what makes us create. It's part of our creative genius. In Benoît's case his way of seeing and his intelligence are inseparable from a certain eroticism. Mr. Jacquot, 65, decided to become a filmmaker at 13, influenced by American movies and the French New Wave. He began his film career in his early 20s as an assistant to Marguerite Duras and wrote and directed his first film in 1975. But his career, which includes documentaries, television, theater and opera productions in addition to feature films, began to take its defining turn in the late 1980s. "I made some films with an actress named Dominique Sanda, and I lived with her," he said by telephone from Spoleto, Italy, where he was rehearsing a play. She was very beautiful, but not a very good actress. And since she wasn't a very good actress, the films weren't very good. Ms. Sanda won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976. In 1990 he made "The Disenchanted" with a 17-year-old Judith Godrèche, another real-life love interest whom he had first chosen for a role in his 1988 film "The Beggars" (alongside Ms. Sanda). The movie was a popular success, and Mr. Jacquot became known for films that often focused on young female leads. In 1995 "A Single Girl," starring a 17-year-old Ms. Ledoyen, was another hit that put Ms. Ledoyen on people's radar. "Benoît is someone who in a certain way doesn't change," Ms. Ledoyen, now 35, said by telephone from Paris. He stays very loyal to his desires, to his vision of cinema, and that's his great strength. It had been more than 15 years since we had worked together, but it felt like yesterday. Mr. Jacquot happily admits a fixation with girls on the brink of womanhood. "It's a very filmable age where one passes from one state to another and the cinema represents that better than anything," he said. And he claims it's something of a job requirement to fall in love with his every ingénue. "I can't imagine filming an actress without having some kind of amorous link with her, it's impossible," he said. Even if it's just one scene, there's something amorous about the act of filming a woman. Is it truly possible to remain such a love-struck schoolboy in his 65-year-old heart? "Maybe I'm a bit less so now, because certainly there's a moment when that calms down," he said. But I don't calm down easily. As soon as there's an actress around, I'm magnetized. He added that he needs to feel that an actress has a strong desire to work with him before he's willing to idolize her on screen: "I need to feel that for her it's necessary and important and decisive that I film her. If not, it doesn't really interest me. Ms. Seydoux, 26, said by telephone from Paris: "Benoît is a bit like a woman in his desire to be swept off his feet. He's pretty feminine himself, and he's attracted to women and obsessed with femininity, and I think the mystery of women is all-encompassing for him. The way he films an actress is his way of making love to her. In "Farewell" Mr. Jacquot's camera follows Ms. Seydoux as she rushes through the back corridors of Versailles while all hell is slowly breaking loose. "It's a young guy's thing, the one that I no longer am but still believe myself to be, to follow girls in the street," Mr. Jacquot said. It's a very French thing, in fact. To have a camera, and choose to be dazzled by a girl and decide to follow her, for me that's the cinema. My work is to follow my actresses with a camera like you follow girls in the street. He said he hopes to keep chasing pretty girls down the street with his camera as long as he can get away with it. "When I'm 100, I'm still going to be 18 in my head," he said. It's a neurosis, a sort of pathology, but I find it amusing and interesting, and it allows me to continue to make films often, as if I was 20. I can't imagine myself as old, even if I am old as night. Maybe it will come one day. In general the girls I spend my time with, who are often actresses, frequently try to show me that I'm old, but I still can't see it. Despite his tireless decades-long quest to chase the mysteries of those female creatures who were seemingly put on earth to beguile him, Mr. Jacquot said he isn't sure he understands the opposite sex any better than he ever did. "I don't know how to explain it," he said. It's like the horizon: The closer you get, the farther away it seems.