Last year, Blue Is the Warmest Color was the movie with the steamy sex scene that had everyone talking at the New York Film Festival. This year, another French film with "blue" in the title is causing the same effect. From actor and director Mathieu Amalric, The Blue Room opens with two lovers, Julien (Amalric) and Esther (his real-life partner Stéphanie Cléau), both nude and sweaty after an afternoon encounter in the titular room. Both married, Esther asks Julien to ponder what would become of their relationship if they were both suddenly available. Then, cutting back and forth between future police inquiries and the events that led Julien there, the movie slowly reveals how a simple contemplation can lead to the ultimate undoing of a man’s life.

A prolific actor in his native France, Amalric is better known stateside for his roles as a quadriplegic fashion editor in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the villain in Quantum of Solace. Yet the actor admits directing has always been his number-one passion. “I started as an assistant director or trainee since I’m seventeen, I always thought about directing films,” Amalric says. Twenty years ago, when Amalric was working as an assistant on an Arnaud Desplechin movie, the director saw something in him and cast him as the lead. “Desplechin invented me as an actor,” he explains.