Casting Director Elisabeth Jereski originally planned to cast Marine Corporal Joshua James in the lead, but was rebuffed by his local Squadron Commander, Lt. Col. F.J. Usry, as the graphic sex scenes and violence would portray the Marine Corps, with which James was actively serving in 29 Palms, in a "less than positive light in the community."
Yekaterina Golubeva (Katia) died August 14, 2011, in Paris, France. The cause was never made public.
First (and so far only) film of Bruno Dumont to be shot in the US.
Yekaterina Golubeva's cause of death was suicide.
Nr. 38 on Slant Magazine's 'The 100 Best Films of the Aughts' list: "This minimalist horror film from French auteur Bruno Dumont pares all aspects of narrative storytelling back, reducing plot, character, action, and image to the bare essential as a pair of bickering lovers venture out into the California desert on a photojournalism assignment, using the opportunity to screw and fight their way through a remote landscape. There is an unaccountable feeling of dread in the images, perhaps suggested by a threateningly arid soundscape, and one has the feeling that predators are lurking just beyond the edge of the frame waiting to pounce. The climax is as harrowing as Oeil pour oeil (1978), only told through the eye of an art-house provocateur." [2010]