As she promotes her new film, L’objet du délit, actress-director Agnès Jaoui revisits her Oscar experience from 2001.
L’objet du délit takes the shape of a double-edged moment for fans of Agnès Jaoui. On one hand, it marks the director’s return behind the camera, eight years after Place publique (her longest hiatus between feature films in her directing career). On the other, it obviously marks her first film without her longtime partner, Jean-Pierre Bacri (who passed away in 2021). The occasion, in particular, to dive back into the rich filmography of this talented actress-writer-director.
A notion that other journalists have also picked up on. Interviewed on France Télévision as part of the promotion for her seventh film, Agnès Jaoui was invited to revisit a few standout moments from her prolific career. Among them, her presence at the 2001 Oscars, where she was nominated, with The Taste of Others, for Best International Feature Film. And her take on the prestigious event is, to put it mildly, rather amusing.
HER OWN TASTE
On the program Télé Matin, Agnès Jaoui was invited to weigh in on an archival clip from her 2001 Oscars appearance, and, mischievously, she uttered the line: “C’est tout ce que je déteste, mais c’est drôle.” The actress then explained whether, yes or no, her presence at the ceremony felt like a bad memory:
“In other words, they didn’t give a damn about me. And so it’s not very pleasant. We knew it would be Tigre et Dragon [Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon] winning Best International Feature Film. And then they just might have wanted me to work in the United States, but opening up to the wider world and watching foreign culture… That’s a lot, really. […] It was completely unique and it was fascinating, funny, and all that. But from the point of view of personal, intellectual nourishment, uh…”
That dangling sentiment closes with a sly wink, as she points to a photo of herself in a gown on the red carpet and quips: “There, at least I had a beautiful outfit!”
In any case, it’s amusing to imagine what Agnès Jaoui might have done if she’d chosen to entertain Hollywood offers. One can easily picture, for someone with a Woody Allen-like sensibility, films not unlike certain American successors’ works, such as Noah Baumbach (Greenberg, Frances Ha). But enough with the alternate history—the filmmaker chose to stay in France and continued to make smart comedies throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Perhaps that isn’t such a bad thing. L’objet du délit has been in theaters since May 27, 2026.
