I would have to concur with Alain Robbe-Grillet who stated in a televised interview that he is not a cinephile. He is interested in “certain films,” that’s it.

“What are commonly called true cinephiles are mental retards (débile mentale) who love “the movies”, people who run to any theatre to submit to viewing any film. They consume with the same pleasure whatever genre of film. That is what is known as cinephilia. It’s an illness, though a less common one than it used to be [during the heydays of the Nouvelle Vague],” he concedes.

From Alain Robbe-Grillet : Je ne suis pas un cinéphile ! Youtube clip posted by beethoven000999.

In the same interview Grillet adds that he is neither a devourer of books. The way I like to interpret this soundbite is that Grillet does not follow any medium, but rather is in search of certain sensibilities. Mine include:

absurd – alternative – anti – avant-garde – banned – bizarre – clandestine – controversial – counterculture – cult – eccentric – elitist – esoteric – excessive – extravagance – exotic – experimental – forbidden – gratuitous – grotesque – hermetic – hidden – horror – illegal – incongruous – independent – intellectual – irrational – kinky – kitsch – libertine – macabre – modern – monstrous – non-mainstream – obscure – occult – offbeat – offensive – original – outsider – perverse – postmodern – queer – radical – rare – revolutionary – scatological – sensational – strange – subculture – subversive – supernatural – surreal – taboo – transgressive – travesty – ugly – uncanny – unconventional – underground – unusual – weird – wild

P. S.: guilty pleasure of the day: Yelle – “A Cause des Garçons” Remix Tepr Video Tecktonik, a popular track when it first came out in 1987 in Francophone Europe, here in a recent remix.