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If there's any modern director who could be called an ascetic of the spoken word, it’s Eugène Green. It’s not that his films aren’t talky; in fact, the majority of the action occurs in and around the dialogue (or, as in the case of Le monde vivant, within and out of the dialogue). Green believes firmly enough in spoken language—and in the inseparability of language from the culture that produced it, and in turn in the inseparability of ideas from the language they were conceived in—to never use it carelessly (there are no throwaway lines in a Eugène Green film), which is why it’s unsurprising that he prefers e-mail interviews and prefers to answer questions in French, his adopted language (he was born without accent marks over his first name in New York City and emigrated to France as a young man) and the...