Christina is the most tenacious woman in Toronto. She started to make phone calls and said to the CBC, if you're not making this, let's strike a deal. The CBC would be paid out of Telefilm money and make it as their first theatrical feature. Christina was very keen on having a British actress in the lead because that would allow us to do a coproduction and it felt better, anyway, to have either a Britisher or Australian coming into town. The film originally focused on the old people of the town and the younger couple were secondary, but that clearly was the wrong way to go.
Nobody wants to watch a beautiful young couple play secondary, supporting players.
So we shifted it. The young man believes his town can be saved, against all hope, against reality. He's the town banker. Bankers are very important in small towns, at least he believes they are. This branch, in reality, would be closed by now.