In a 2002 interview for WENN, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas stated that this is the movie of which that she is the most proud and views it as the peak of her career. In a 2015 interview for "Gloucester Citizen", she cited this movie as one of the movies of which that she's most proud alongside Il paziente inglese (1996) and Solo Dio perdona (2013).
Rather than learn Romanian for her part, Dame Kristin Scott Thomas read her lines phonetically. She had all the lines translated into French, which she speaks fluently, so she knew what she was saying. She was going to be dubbed, but in the end they didn't bother because she was able to say it with enough conviction.