[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.

Change and renewal are themes in life, arent they? We keep growing throughout life.

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.

...it occurred to her how some people continued through no design of one's own to be in one's life while others might initially enter in a sort of blaze and seem to change everything but then might not stay around.

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

I learned that if you love a boy you are no longer free. The boy may become more important than your own self and if it is so, you will find trouble there. The first time you are hurt in your heart, you do not forget the lesson. It stays forever.

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