The plantation house was a real sugar cane plantation manor, albeit abandoned.
Michelle Pfeiffer's production company had originally purchased the rights to the novel, with the intention that Pfeiffer herself would star. However, the actress opted to simply serve as producer on the film.
Director Michael Cristofer said in interviews, and in his commentary for the movie, that before the sex scene between Luis and Julia was filmed, Angelina Jolie told him that she would only film the scene if she was fully naked and without tapes or anything else to cover her up. Antonio Banderas also decided to do the scene fully naked after talking with them, and only Cristofer and a couple of more crew members were involved in filming it. However, this meant that a lot of footage filmed for the scene could not be used in the film because it was just too graphic and explicit to show onscreen. Cristofer said he was unable to even include it in the NC-17 unrated version, which is why in all versions of the film, the sex scene has very obvious cuts which are covered with editing and fade-outs in between the shots. This was also where the rumor started about how Jolie and Banderas had real-life sex, which was said to have been another reason for why the scene was cut down. Cristofer said he still had a copy of the original cut of the film, which, among other deleted scenes, also included the original uncut sex scene.
Any qualms Melanie Griffith might have had about the explicit sex scenes between her husband Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie carrying on off-set were swiftly dealt a blow when Jolie eloped with her second husband Billy Bob Thornton halfway through the shoot.
This film was a very loose remake of François Truffaut's La sirène du Mississipi (1969) (Mississippi Mermaid), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve, shifting the location of the story and also moving it back in time by several decades.