Ae Fond Kiss (2004) :: Crew Notes

Production Crew Notes

• Director - Ken Loach
• Producer - Rebecca O'Brien
• Writer - Paul Laverty
• Production Designer - Martin Johnson
• Director of Photography - Barry Ackroyd
• Editor - Jonathan Morris

Director » Ken Loach

He's becoming something of a well-kent face round the Glasgow area, yet Loach never intended My Name Is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and Ae Fond Kiss as a comprehensive trilogy or, indeed, a defining take on modern Scottish experience. "They are, I hope, three representative pictures, three different stories, of life in the West of Scotland."

Tariq Khan, unlike his filmic predecessors, is not at the heel-end of his society. "He's quite entrepreneurial. He's someone from peasant stock who has managed to make money with his shop, yet he's not middle-class. The middle-classes would tend to look down on someone like Tariq." Material comfort brings a degree of security, even solace, to Tariq, but ultimately, what's at stake here is something less tangible than money but far further reaching. "It's a film about how people define themselves."

Loach and Laverty mulled over the basic premise of a love story set against the backdrop of the Glasgow-Asian community, working through a series of draft scripts till the shape of the film began to emerge.

"But it's the people who bring it to life. When you have a character in a script, there's always a space within that character for the real, three-dimensional person to fit in. Sometimes they bring that character towards what they are themselves."

As the cast began to line up, he was tickled by the fact that, while Casim and his siblings are immediately perceived as the outsiders, it is Irish-born Eva who is in fact the immigrant.

The Glasgow-Asian community was, admits Loach, "a world I didn't know much about. I had to listen and ask a lot of questions, to gain a sense of other people and find the common denominators.

You find that the fundamental politics of families are the same underneath - the difference is in how they are expressed. To get this right, you have to listen, and keep asking how things should be said.

My hope is that people will enjoy the complexity of not knowing what to wish for as the outcome. I hope they'll care about what happens to the characters and enjoy chewing it all over."

Filmography

• Sweet Sixteen (2002)
• The Navigators (2001)
• Bread and Roses (1999)
• My Name Is Joe (1998)
• Carla's Song (1996)
• Land And Freedom (1995)
• Ladybird Ladybird (1994)
• Raining Stones (1993)
• Riff-Raff (1991)
• Hidden Agenda (1990)
• Fatherland (1986)
• Looks and Smiles (1981)
• The Gamekeeper (1980)
• Black Jack (1979)
• Days of Hope (1975)
• Family Life (1972)
• Kes (1970)
• Poor Cow (1967)
• Cathy Come Home (1966)
• Up the Junction (1972)

Since 1964 Loach has also made many dramas for television and documentary films.

Producer » Rebecca O'Brien

"It never gets any easier, even after successes like Sweet Sixteen," says Rebecca O'Brien on the subject of financing this, her seventh feature film collaboration with Ken Loach.

The film was pre-sold to 'our usual partners' , namely EMC in Germany, Diaphana in France, Bianca and BIM in Italy, Tornasol in Spain, Cineart in Belgium and Holland and Film Coopi in Switzerland, who function as distributors and as co-producers. "As long as we can raise the money, it makes sense to make the film with our regular European partners. The relationships go back over a number of films so there's a great deal of trust. We describe the film and how we'll do it and that's enough, which is a real luxury."

The £3 million production was assisted by a British tax scheme, allowing investors to offset tax by investing in the film, by Azure Films, who provided 30% of the total investment needed. Scottish Screen contributed vital investment finance alongside a grant from the Glasgow Film Fund completing the funding structure.

"The film will also benefit from a sale and lease back arrangement, which is a British tax incentive in addition to the tax back scheme. We simply sell the film to a financial partnership and they lease it back to us."

Working with so many funding sources is a complex business but it has, says O'Brien, its distinct advantages. "It means we keep control of the creative side which is definitely desirable."

O'Brien feels that that film has "a freshness and lightness that people will find surprising for us. And because the film's shot in summer, it's even got a brighter texture." Another feature she loves about this film is that it is just that. A film, made for cinema, first and foremost. Previous films have always been pre-sold to TV (My Name Is Joe was commissioned by Channel 4 and Sweet Sixteen pre-sold to the BBC) but thanks to a highly successful relationship forged with Icon over Sweet Sixteen, this time the rights were sold directly to the distributor.

"We like to be seen as film-makers. The cinema audience is then our priority and speciality."

Writer » Paul Laverty

The tree-lined streets and high-ceilinged interiors mark a radical departure from the circumscribed worlds of My Name Is Joe and Sweet Sixteen.

"These kids are bright, they have lots of opportunities, but because of culture and religion, there are tremendous imperatives on their minds," says Laverty, who lived through his own period of indoctrination when he attended a seminary as a child and young adult. "It is fascinating how religion wants to hold onto its flocks, starting from a very young age."

Recent world events nudged him towards the Asian community in Glasgow, where the aftershocks of 9/11, and the fear generated by the drive to war with Iraq, were almost tangible. Here, in conversations with "young guys in medallions driving souped-up cars, with older men on the steps of the Mosque, traditional Muslim mothers with their kids", he found a world that was unexpectedly familiar.

"The more I found out about the Pakistani community, the more I saw similarities with the Catholic minority community of an earlier generation. Like the Pakistanis, the Catholic Irish immigrants were demonised, seen as inferior, lazy and stupid. And with different allegiances - to another nation, and another god." But the more he found out, the less he could be sure of. "Eventually, every stereotype is blown out of the water. Even within families, there are multiple senses of identity. In the Khan family, everyone has a different viewpoint. They're fictional, but they're informed by what I found."

Once he begins to write, "I try to follow the characters, to listen to them. For this family, there is movement and change ahead."

While the film seeks to unearth the common threads that link us together - the search for love and certainty - it isn't afraid to question the values held dear by some of the characters. But if the traditionalists of the Pakistani community aren't being let off the hook, neither is the Christian establishment or the propagators of a casual racism that is dangerously close to acquiring a new-found respectability.

This is a film that raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps that's the point.

Production Designer » Martin Johnson

Johnson's working relationship with Loach spans 30 years, yet no two films are alike. This one, he feels, represents a significant departure in that the issues are ones of race and religion, as opposed to poverty and alienation. As if to underline this fact, the setting is a world away from the undernourished environment of Sweet Sixteen. "It's set within an aspirational community. People live in decent houses, nice conditions."

He knows he has succeeded in his role when "it looks as if nothing's been done". The Khans' house was a multiple tenancy in the southside of Glasgow. "It was a mess and the garden was like a bombsite." But a few months' cultivation and a redecoration based on the interiors of houses he visited over the course of his preparations produced the Khans' comfortable, middle-class home.

"We rarely work within a studio, because it's an alien environment for non-actors. It's difficult for them to concentrate when there're people gawping at them, so there's only ever essential crew on set. That way, the best reactions are achieved. They're in their own world. Things that happen are things that happen and they don't know what's going to befall them."

Johnson has worked on many big-budget projects, including major commercials, "where there's an enormous amount of money available to build vast sets." While he enjoys it as something of an antidote to his more serious work, he doesn't believe that more money and a bigger crew necessarily makes for better films.

"Human intercourse is better with a few people. Multiply and things slip through the net. It's quite fragile."

Director of Photography » Barry Ackroyd

This, says Ackroyd, is a gentler, more romantic film than those he's shot previously for Loach. Yet its sexual content, which Laverty felt was essential for conveying the urgency of the relationship between Casim and Roisin, represented a quite serious, technical challenge. "Trying to get naturalism in sexually oriented scenes, to make them as erotic as in reality, is not easy." Whereas in most scenes he sticks with an eye-level camera, in these he "slightly changed the point of view, with the camera lower down. But the style isn't changed."

Ackroyd has worked with Loach since shooting Riff-Raff in 1991, and the rule of standing back and allowing things to happen still very much applies. "To allow the actors time to settle into the scene, the camera "turns over" several seconds after the action begins."

"You know what you're trying to get but you shoot an awful lot of film before it happens. We were shooting fewer, longer scenes - 60 compared to an average of 120. But one scene tells us what three might." He likes the high level of concentration such a method requires, where there is no counting beats, no layering of camera shots. "There's a controlled randomness to it. We're waiting for a genuine moment, with the camera "sensing" rather than pointing."

The film was shot during the long, hot summer of 2003, giving Ackroyd a rare run of brilliant, if highly variable, light conditions. In fact, it was the overcast days that provided the ideal, diffuse light that photographers love. But on bright days, while the cast enjoyed the sunshine, Ackroyd had to tackle creeping shadows and sun slants. "Ken seeks to make the light as believable as possible, so he favours natural light. People don't really think about light. There were lights on during the day in the school, for instance. The people there didn't notice them, but we switched them all off."

Editor » Jonathan Morris

Morris has worked with Loach on documentaries as well as films, but is fast coming to the conclusion that more can be said with drama. "It gets the message across to more people, and lends a voice to those not usually granted such a thing." His job begins just as everyone else's is coming to a finish.

"After the film's shot, I look at the rushes. I'm the first viewer, if you like. I try not to know the script too well, so it's as much of a surprise as it can be." The first cut, which takes around ten weeks, is "always too long". The following month is devoted to "fiddling around", shaving it by forty minutes or so, before the soundtrack is laid down.

Working with Ken means "discussions and negotiations right to the end. But he has the final say, which is as it should be. Most films are compromised by commercial interests, with anonymous executives making the decisions. But there's no huge money riding on this. It gives us a great deal of freedom."

Cast Notes »