What makes for a noir-like narration? I sat there in surrounded by a swarm of Dashiel Hamnett sentences, a parade of words familiarised by the likes of Bogart and Rob Mitchum. I realised that there was a stinking lack of originality occupying the monologues I came up with that day; they were a sad bunch, and I was admittedly in a rather sad mood myself. I decided to stop writing for a spell, placing my thoughts that day on the images I wanted to film.

The idea of using the weather to represent different stages of a person’s life appealed to me. I thought it would be quite neat to go and break a film up using title cards that show how the years progress weather-wise, a technique that I’ve seen being used quite similarly in films by Hong Sang-soo. The order would be as follows: Rain, Sun, Cloud, and finally back to Rain again. Rainy days are often used to signify sadness, but I want to use the rain to show coming out of that sadness (if only momentarily). I think it might create a moment of ambiguity for the audience to be able to question themselves.

How are people able to heal from the scars of the past, and face what’s next?  This is the central idea for my film. I want to show a protagonist being lost in their thoughts, but ultimately able to emerge from them having grown and feeling a bit better about themselves. It follows then that what I need to focus on is the nuances of those particular thoughts, how to represent them in a way that feels organic and at the same time adhering to the noir frame my film is adopting.