Their faces seem to mimic the Baroque faces of saints and martyrs, like Bernini’s sculptures  of Teresa of Avila, Saint Lawrence, and Ludovica Albertoni. What influence did the Baroque depictions of pleasure and pain, and scarred bodies by artists like El Greco, Bernini, Bosch, Caravaggio, or Gentileschi, have on your films’ blending of science fiction and horror with themes of religion or mysticism?

It’s a wonderful idea. I don’t feel it to be there, really, I must say. It comes so much from the work itself and my own particular observations of the human condition. It seems to be a much more direct, one-to-one relationship between the narratives and imagery that I’ve created. And I should say that I’m a passionate atheist. The lives of the saints to me are kind of like horrible fables. So, it’s not something I would be attracted to, I don’t think. But perhaps unconsciously or subconsciously…because as a card-carrying existentialist, I think there is a vector that involves an acceptance of martyrdom. The idea that we will die and there will be nothing left of us, as far as our own personal experience is concerned. To accept that is obviously very difficult, which is why we have art and religion—as far as I’m concerned, anyway. And philosophically, of course, it’s the foundation of existentialism. There could be that connection, a sort of backdoor connection. It feels right when I say it, let me put it that way. 

Your films are often associated with futurism and futurist dystopia and technologies, but you’ve also worked on a film version of the opera Madame Butterfly, you directed an operatic version of The Fly, and I read that as a child you were fascinated by early Disney films, all of which are rooted in a Baroque visuality. I’m wondering if your interests in Baroque forms like opera and the grotesque were part of what drew you to take on this very strange phenomenon of the waxwork body?

That I can’t deny. It’s not an obvious connection, but there is a palpable reality to it. I was certainly affected by those early animated films. It’s strange— these figures’ faces are cartoonlike in some ways, whereas their inner bodies are physically correct and very realistic. There’s an interesting schizophrenia there, which I think you could apply to all Disney films. They are also very schizophrenic in many ways. The editor [who I was working with at the time] said to me, “It’s like these women have been waiting for you for over 200 years.” I kind of enjoy that.