Between children and parents there is a difficulty of seeing each other simply as people.

Recording a scene with paint rather than film sinks you more deeply into your surroundings. You have to look a little harder and a little longer. And you end up with a memento.

Desire suppressed finds its way into other more surreal settings, into dreams.

[The director's idea for the film was:] A young American or English girl goes to Tuscany to visit English expatriates. She is on a mission to lose her virginity. That's a mission easily accomplished, if that's the only mission. The story had to be more complicated than that. Because there is so little happening dramatically, there had to be something to keep you curious.

...[She] felt as if she were both a stranger to herself and more herself than she'd ever been.

She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.

The word dysfunction has, I think, served its purpose and now has lost its meaning. Every family, like every person, is imperfect, after all. The idea that there is a family somewhere who functions, is an odd concept. In my youth I was running from my family to try to find out who I was-their influence distracted me. Now I see what a powerful hold they have, no matter what.