From the Film Maker...

In my film, I echo the painting's sombre colour palette - faint lilac and brown tones - in the interiors as well as in the costume of one of my characters, Maureen, in her penultimate scene.

My shot of George and Maureen in close-up is a reworking of the composition of Virgin and Child. I like the freer style developed by Titian in his latter years and used in this painting. I gave a softer less sharply focused look to the interiors. The resultant haziness in the film was an attempt to enhance the intimacy with the characters and their respective emotional states.

I was inspired by the theme of maternal and eternal love painted by Titian in this poignant painting found in his study after his death. In his twilight years, how would he look back on his life? And would he have felt sadness in respect of younger generations he had outlived?

The motif of mother and child appears throughout the film and the story takes up the plight of a father who has lost a child and is in his most desperate grief.

In the tenderness of the Virgin's pose, I saw a look of longing and sadness that made me reflect on the complex nature of human love. The main character is regressing to a more infantile state through the pain of the death of his son. He then seeks solace in his last moments in the arms of a neighbour who shows concern for him.

In a reversal of the maternal impulse to sustain life and nurture, Maureen, the neighbour, surrogate carer, chooses in her dilemma to give in to George's wish to be ‘let go'. I wanted to explore the meaning of a loving act of assisted suicide to relieve a human being of suffering.
Pezhmaan Alinia