All of Coppola’s films up to that point had dealt in some way with alienation. Two of them had been book adaptations. Two were original scripts by Coppola herself. But with her next filmic endeavour, Coppola wanted to go even more personal than ever before.

“After Marie Antoinette,” she says, “which was really fun and over the top, but it just involved so many people, I thought, ‘Oh I’d really like to go back to doing something more intimate where I can just focus on one or two characters and a small crew.’” All she needed was a story…