Todd Haynes in Pedro Pascal's 'De Noche', What You Can't See on Screen and the Radical Power of Love

LYON, France – When Mexican costume designer Ana Terrazas told Todd Haynes that the most important thing about a dress is how it smells, the filmmaker had only one response: "You're hired." The Oscar-nominated director talked about his upcoming romantic noir drama starring Pedro Pascal called "De Noche" at the Lumiere Film Festival in […]

At the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon, France, the director revealed how he shaped the score for "May December" and joined Christian Vachon to discuss the future of independent cinema.

LYON, France – When Mexican costume designer Ana Terrazas told Todd Haynes that the most important thing about a dress is how it smells, the filmmaker had only one response: "You're hired."

The Oscar-nominated director shared a story about his upcoming Pedro Pascal romantic noir drama "De Noche" at the Lumiere Film Festival on Tuesday, offering a glimpse into his approach to filmmaking, from the music and sounds that shape his films to the emotions that can't always be expressed on screen. RELATED STORIES Elizabeth Banks is Officially Set to Play Karen Reed in Amazon's 'Reach' Spinoff 'Nigley' Has Been Renewed for a Second Season on Amazon

"We see movies with our eyes and ears," Hines explained. But the films that evoke smell and touch and other kinds of senses are the ones that allow us to fill them." Popular in Variety

Haynes is in Lyon with longtime producer Christian Vachon for a retrospective of four of his films: "Poison," "Safe," "Far From Heaven" and "I'm Not There," including newly remastered versions of the first two.

The director — his latest film follows a detective (Pascal) and a younger school teacher (Danny Ramirez) on the run from corruption in 1930s Los Angeles for Mexico — described the tasks he sets for himself before each production. He said he immerses himself in films that share a genre or cinematic style, not necessarily its historical context.

He said: "It's as if I give myself a task every time.

While preparing the picture book for the Oscar-nominated "December May," starring Julianne Moore opposite Natalie Portman, Haynes began listening to Michel Legrand's score for Joseph Luzzi's "The Go-Between."

Music soon became the center of the project. From day one, he played it on stage and used it to design camera movements. At the editing stage, the music was so attached to the film that Heinz asked composer Marcelo Zarvos to arrange and adapt it. "We couldn't let it go," he recalls. It became a definitive part of the film's structure, language and energy."

After watching the remake of "Safe" last night in Lyon, Hines praised sound designer Leslie Schatz for the haunting soundtrack to the 1995 drama, in which Moore plays a woman suffering from a mysterious illness.

He described "all the strange, lurking, unconscious noises" in the film that created what he called "a kind of sound," a magnetic field in which the contamination he felt from his surroundings could literally be heard.

Reflecting on her six-time Oscar-nominated 2015 romance, Hynes recalls how journalists kept congratulating her and Cate Blanchett and Cannes Best Actress winner Rooney Mara for playing strong women. He said Blanchett disagreed: Carol was not an invincible hero, but a woman constrained by her time, struggling to live her own life and how she wanted to live.

"There's something radical and anti-social about love," said Heinz, citing the great French writer Roland Barthes' "Dialogue of a Lover," which he shared with the cast.

Hines also paid tribute to Vachon, who helped save "Safe" when it was struggling to raise its $1 million budget. He said that the film would not exist without him.

Already aware of the business realities of the industry, Vachon recalled the practical advice he had given him years earlier when he proposed making his first film, "Poison," as three interconnected 20-minute stories.

I said, you know what, Todd? he recalls.

"I feel like we're creating a new generation of moviegoers, but we're not giving them enough movies to see."

Hines also revisited his childhood obsession with Lucille Ball, which inspired his autobiographical short, Dottie Gets Spanked. He went on to talk about the possible screening of the film alongside Superstar: The Karen Najjar Story, his cult short film made with Barbie dolls that has rarely been shown publicly after legal disputes over the rights to its music. The filmmaker hinted strongly at what might be in store for Wednesday evening's surprise festival screening at the Institut Lumiere.

The Lumiere Film Festival continues until October 18 in Lyon.