When I think of women, the first thing that comes to mind is menstrual blood. Maybe it really is the womb’s tears, carrying, like death, an immense sense of weight. The second thing is all manner of supernatural matters – many people are born holding an instinctive reverence for women’s “spiritual power,” the way people always say “virgin’s blood” has all sorts of uses, preserving youth forever, summoning spirits, and so on. That scene in Baise-moi… no, in The Anatomy of Hell, where they drink each other’s menstrual blood together, shook me for a long time.

Throughout European history, countless witches were burned by religious tribunals – supposedly numbering in the millions. In truth, most of these so-called witches were biologists, chemists… it’s the same old story: if only Madame Curie had been born a few hundred years earlier… But setting aside the historical record, there really is some particular quality in women that I genuinely sense at times – I believe women are able, at certain moments, to pick up on strange omens for no clear reason at all.

I recently came across the work of two female photographers, Claude Cahun and her lover Marcel Moore. Their work captures the feminine quality so well – rebellious, eerie, deconstructive all at once – those thin images brimming with mysterious elements left a deep impression on me. And women’s writing deserves mention too: to me, women’s prose is sensitive and delicate, carrying a lingering uniqueness that men can never manage to imitate, no matter how hard they try.

Women really are quite complicated. Looking back through history, it’s often women who have stirred up the greatest storms – though of course there’s also the factor of upholding patriarchal society at play in that. But in any case, women keep becoming more mysterious to me. Can a woman really be equated with a witch?