They met in a cafe in Manhattan. She was working on a comic strip for her book, which was about a young artist and her quest for an apartment and a day job in Brooklyn. He was a successful French film director (although she didn't know this at the time) having coffee with his two small sons. The boys went over to Gabrielle Bell and asked to see what she was drawing. Then they asked if she would tutor them to draw comics, and their father got up to introduce himself.
"That's how it — we — started," said Bell, seated cozily against Michel Gondry, one of the directors for the omnibus movie "Tokyo!" The couple was in the city earlier this month to promote the movie and since Gondry's segment (titled "Interior Design") is based entirely on Bell's work "Cecil and Jordan in New York," it seemed natural that they would be interviewed together. Sharing the kind of shorthand communication that is common between two artists as well as private partners, Bell and Gondry added sentences to each other's answers or sought each other's confirmation to their replies. It was a session of interplay between two minds that have shared the same ideas, the same ideals and on this occasion — worked on the same project.
As a depiction of Tokyo, the segment was spot-on, but the conversation between the couple sounded more French than Japanese. Few Japanese couples would want to communicate with such intensity.