.

How do you arrive at a story? Chance intervenes. You don't really know which path you are going to take. I believe deeply in chance. I had received a proposal to make a film on the theme of Frankenstein but actually in that genre. [It was to be a] completely commercial project. As I was desperate to make my first film and I'm very obedient, I started writing a conventional Frankenstein movie. But when I started to do the budget, chance happily intervened in my favour because that kind of film needs a lot of sets, and well-known actors, and the producer had to admit he didn't have quite enough funds. So I then proposed a Spanish version ofFrankenstein - not quite so extravagant, without big sets and with only four weeks of filming. He liked that idea. But now I found myself with a very big problem. I wasn't quite sure what to do exactly. On my work desk I had cut out a picture, a frame from James Whale'sFrankenstein, that moment when the monster and the child are together. It was there hanging in my room and I saw it every day, and then I understood that in that image everything was contained. So I called on my own personal experiences and I felt that the identification with the child and the film would be far greater if the infant was also a girl, as opposed to a boy. And so gradually the story started unfolding.

Victor Erice

from an interview with BFI, 2003