French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin guesses at Lithuania as Wellspring's Marie Therese-Guirgis looks on (Photo: STV)

So I stopped by DCTV last night to get to bottom of all this On Set with French Cinema stuff--a series that has seen Bruno Dumont, Laurent Cantet and now Arnaud Desplechin drop in at a few venues around town to brandish their work. Desplechin is the last of the filmmakers to get his Gotham spotlight, showing up downtown on Tuesday and screening La Sentinelle tonight at MoMA at 7:45.

But the honest truth is that I know absolutely nothing about Desplechin; I always thought he was some old New Waver with thick glasses who languished unfairly at the bottom of my Netflix queue for the last year as Bresson's reissued Criterion DVD's filled my annual quota for French cinema. (What, you can watch more than five a year? This is me, tipping my cap.) I freely admit knowing what he looked like only after searching for his photograph on Google. But that was half the battle right there. The other half came in trying to decode what he was saying in his Q&A with Wellspring's Marie Therese-Guirgis.

"I don't believe in Europe," he told an audience member who asked how his films are perceived around the continent. "I just don't. It is so bizarre, it is so bizarre. What is Lithunia? I don't know where Lithuania is on a map.... It's been very important to me, my realtionship with the American audience and the Japanese audience--much more than a European audience. Or the English audience, but then the English are not exactly European. If you say to the British, 'Oh, that is European,' they slap you in your face."

He was a genuinely gregarious guy I would have liked to talk with if only his loving fans would have relinquished his attention for, like, 30 seconds. I think this is where he would say, "C'est la vie," and encourage me (and you!) to try again tonight at MoMA. I may try, but have you heard about As Smart as They Are: The Author Project tonight at Makor? Or the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival's screening of The NYU Suicides?

Jesus! These choices never get any easier! And I have to update my Netflix queue! Je suis désolé, Arnaud!