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THE
COLOUR
OF RED
From a soaring balloon to
seeping blood, Ian McEwan’s bestseller Enduring Love comes vividly to the big screen
D irector Roger Michell (Notting Hill, The Mother,
Changing Lanes) had an ulterior motive basing most of Enduring Love in North London. “I live there and have decided to make films closer and closer to
home as I get older! So most of the places in the film are the places I got to in North London.
“Most of the film takes place in a London which is probably not that well known to tourists but it’s a very real vision – it’s a bit of London that’s my village, my London.”
But despite the proximity of some locations, there was clearly one place that North London could not provide – the site for the opening sequence of Michell’s film and, as memorably, the first 30 pages or so in Ian McEwan’s source novel.
This involves a terrifying yet strangely beautiful hot-air balloon tragedy which is meant to be set somewhere off the M40 in the Vale of Oxford.
This incident is the spark for an increasingly suspenseful psychological thriller about aspects of love involving lecturer Joe (Daniel Craig) his sculp-
tress girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) and the clearly unbalanced Jed (Rhys Ifans).
Adapted by Joe Penhall, Enduring Love also features Bill Nighy, Susan Kynch, Andrew Lincoln and Helen McCrory.
Said producer Kevin Loader: “The balloon sequence was a terrifying prospect because everybody reads the novel and says, ‘Oh God, I read Enduring Love, that opening’s going to make such a fantastic film.’ And Roger and I would sigh and think, ‘Oh no, we’re got to live up to yet another person who’s run this movie in their head already.’”
Photo main: Rhys Ifans as Jed in Enduring Love; Above left: Director Roger Michell; Far right from top: Bill Nighy and Susan Lynch; A scene from Enduring Love; DP Haris Zambarloukos with Camera Operator Simon Baker and crew on location in the Chilterns
16 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video