What is the film about?

Nature and domesticity collide and animal instincts rise to the surface, in a dark tale of love and loss. This film’s soundtrack features audio from collected interviews, creating a story that is constructed from fragments of real-life broken hearts.

What influenced it?

The film was inspired by the textures and intense atmospheres of animation filmmakers such as Jan Švankmajer, but also by live action feature films ranging from Kitchen Sink realism, to Hollywood Noir, to the ‘slow cinema’ of directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr. It was also influenced by visual artists including Edward Hopper, and by experiments in audio documentary by Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange.

A little background information...

I had been talking to the composer Hannah Peel about a possible collaboration, inspired by the love poetry of Edwin Morgan. Hannah had some ideas for an orchestral piece, and I could see it working with a noir-ish experimental stop-motion, in which human and animal characteristics were combined in characters as they were consumed by romantic love and its effects. The BFI and BBC then commissioned the project as part of their Animation18 strand, and Hannah and I worked collaboratively to develop the music and image in tandem.

How was the film made?

I was interested in using an experimental, semi-documentary form for the film and I started interviewing people around the UK about their experiences of falling in love. What I discovered was that most of the stories people brought to me were ones of heartbreak and of the destructive (while also sublime) force of love. These diverse experiences were combined and eventually transformed into the simple story that plays out in the film.
The bulk of the film was made using stop-motion puppets and sets. There was also digital wizardry done on the stop-motion material by the film’s incredible technical director and co-producer Christian Schlaeffer, who the film would not exist without. I was pregnant when it was commissioned, so I shot the film while looking after a newborn. The shoot took place in my attic room in tiny increments over several weeks. As my time was so restricted, I focused on telling the story through shots that involved very minimal movement, and trying to get the maximum meaning and motion from each image. I was fortunate enough to have help from some great contributors, notably Marika Aakala who did wonderful work creating the puppets, and Emma Niemis who developed ingenious sets and props. Hannah adapted her music in response to the changing cut and the dialogic relationship of music, image, and story was central to how the film emerged.