Why did you choose to make another love story?
I didn't exactly want to make another love story. It happens to me a lot. I don't ever know exactly what story I'm going to tell, but all five of my films are love stories. The initial idea with this one was to start making a film that was symmetrically the opposite of "Lovers of the Arctic Circle". The tragedy in "Lovers" affected me a great deal. I decided, partly to help myself, to start the following film with the ending of "Lovers" and then flip it round. Lucia's fate is exactly the opposite; she starts with the news of her lover's death, and then escapes from it.
How did you develop this story?
When I went back to Madrid, I decided I wanted to know about some of the characters' pasts, and I wrote very quickly, in novel form - to discover the characters. The first thing I did was to write the script, which was called "Lucia, a Ray of Sunshine". The next section, which was about the past, was called "Sex", which I wrote in novel form - which I then adapted for the screen. That was now called "Sex Before the Sun." After a few months, I merged them together. The love story came out of the story of the past.
Do you agree the film seems to be about loss?
Yes. Flight was the initial impulse behind the film. But when I wrote "Sex", about the past, I discovered what I was really talking about was suggestion. It's an interesting, strange relationship between the teller of fables, or the suggestor, and the person who is receiving the suggestion. So when Lucia is reading fiction - and she has a preference for difficult, tragic stories - she needs to identify with the characters in the stories, and ask "What would I do in their place?" That way she gets to know herself better, even though these things don't happen to her, but the characters. That way she gets to know her darker side and her instincts, without running any risks. It's the most important relationship in the film.
