Clare Peploe first suggested adapting
James Lasdun's short story "The Siege", which first appeared in the author's 1985 book
The Silver Age (published in the United States as
Delirium Eclipse and Other Stories). Bertolucci conceived the project as a one-hour television movie, but expanded it for theatrical release after seeing the rushes projected on a large screen. It nonetheless remained a low-budget film with a small crew and a brisk shooting schedule of 20-25 scenes each day, roughly four times the director's usual pace. By Peploe's and Bertolucci's own account, the project, Bertolucci's first love story, was a particularly apt one for them as a married couple. Peploe served as both screenwriter and, informally, as co-director. The short story differed from the screen play in three significant ways: it was set in London, not Rome; the woman came from Latin America, not Africa; and Kinsky was depicted as fat and much older than he was in the film. Peploe added a character, Shandurai's friend Agostino, as a way to contrast Shandurai's sociability with Kinsky's social awkwardness. In structuring the story, Bertolucci was intent on minimizing the
exposition, leaving it to the audience to piece together the relationships between characters. Thewlis too had to guess about his character's origins and motivations: Kinsky's character was conceived as an "enigma" with no backstory, other than that he had inherited his villa from an aunt. at 8 vicolo del Bottino in
Rome. The villa is currently being operated by the nearby Hotel Hassler as a separate boutique hotel named Il Palazzetto. As Bertolucci and Peploe first encountered it, the villa was as depicted at the end of the film, a largely unfurnished home with bare walls and an overgrown garden. But the home met the director's criteria for a spiral staircase, and Bertolucci liked the exterior for its two contrasting facades, one overlooking a narrow street leading to a subway station, the other adjacent to the Spanish Steps. The street scenes in both locations were filmed with a hidden camera, allowing the actors to interact with passersby. Throughout the film, a hand-held camera was used for about half the shots. The African sequences that open the film and appear occasionally thereafter were shot last, over four days in
Naivasha, Kenya, with an aerial shot of
Lake Turkana, although no specific African country was identified or implied. After viewing the African footage, Bertolucci re-cut the first half-hour of the adjoining sequences set in Rome. == Reception ==