Was a commissioned project. Jean Ramsay Levi of FIT productions had the idea to make a film from Gilles Perrault's short novel "The Boy With Grey Eyes" ("Le Garçon aux yeux gris") published in 2001.
The sex scene between Gaspard Ulliel and Emmanuelle Béart was shot on the last day of filming and Gaspard had anguish the day before, because it was his first real nude scene. In the morning, they did a rehearsal, he in underwear and she in gym clothes.
Is André Téchiné's fifteenth film.
Is André Téchiné's first literary adaptation.
According to Roger Ebert, tough the film "begins and ends with facts of war, but is really a film about the nature of male and female, about middle-class values and those who cannot afford them, about how helpless we can be when the net of society is broken."