halifax: When director Curtis Radclyffe was in Denmark four and a half years ago with a friend who was at the time having problems with his partner, the mother of a 14-year-old girl, the two fled to an island bird sanctuary which was home to four ornithologists and a cormorant colony. Because of the shy nature of the resident cormorants, spectators were required to approach them via a tunnel, a palliative measure to allow observation without alarming the sensitive birds.

‘The tunnel was very long and atmospheric and strange,’ says Radclyffe. ‘The island itself had a very peculiar atmosphere of stillness – the strange sensations of a completely desolate place. And the mother and daughter were an interesting pair.’

These elements, together with some sketches and ideas from a friend, and script reworking by writers Sue Maheu and Tom Willocks congealed over four years to form Sweet Angel Mine, a $5 million coproduction of Paragon Entertainment’s HandMade Films, Nova Scotia’s Imagex Films, the u.k.’s Mass Love Films, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, Telefilm Canada and British Screen (Britain’s funding agency), which was shot over seven weeks (Sept. 11 to Oct. 27) around Halifax.

According to Chris Zimmer, president of Imagex (Margaret’s Museum), the film will be posted in London and, if all goes smoothly, will be ready for the Berlin Film Festival in February 1996.

Radclyffe is in the process of shooting a tension-filled scene with three of the principal characters in the kitchen created in the sam studio in Bedford, a 30-minute drive from downtown Halifax. He quietly and painstakingly scrutinizes the scene and the monitor while first ad Max Keene employs his considerable vocal skills to keep order on the set.

The studio houses elaborately constructed interiors and a burial mound, which is used in some of the film’s more gruesome scenes. The interior of the kitchen is washed in faded blue paint and has an old-fashioned quality that reflects the cloistered life of the women in the story.

The film also exploits the natural landscapes of Nova Scotia, with shooting taking place on beaches and in dense woods.

Talking later in the darkened kitchen, flicking his cigarette into the remnants of a gutted squash, Radclyffe says that after seeing a series of producers drop away from the project, he met Sam Taylor, owner of Mass Love, who ‘read the script the way it was meant to be read – between the lines.’

Taylor, whose last feature project was The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, about an ambitious if misguided young man who assumes the task of poisoning the world, says putting the project together was a comparatively smooth process.

Taylor met Zimmer while the two were speaking on panels at a conference on coproduction. Taylor brought in financing from British Screen and Zimmer brought funds from Telefilm, the nsfdc and the province’s labor tax rebate to the table.

The project also received distribution advances from fifth partner HandMade, which was acquired by Paragon last summer. The film is Paragon’s first production under its HandMade division.

Taylor met HandMade president Gareth Jones last Christmas and he liked the project. ‘It’s not a typical HandMade film,’ says Taylor. ‘I think he liked that – pushing it a bit like Mona Lisa and things like that they used to do, rather than classic comedies.’

Sweet Angel Mine is a psychological thriller starring British actor Oliver Milburn as Paul, a young man on a personal quest, who has found himself in the remote, xenophobic town of Milestone. He meets the young Rauchine, played by Canadian Margaret Langrick (Cold Comfort), who lives in isolation with her pathologically protective mother, Megan, played by Alberta Watson (Spanking the Monkey).

Paul naturally becomes the focus of the intense wrath of the dangerously maladjusted Megan, who is in turn spurred on by the sinister grandma, played by Anna Massey.

‘In a way it’s a surreal and extreme film, but the emotional truths are very strong and realistic,’ says Radclyffe, adding that he’s never been a fan of the overly earnest documentary. ‘The film relies on pieces of extremely good acting in the classical sense, interspersed with pieces of high action.’

Radclyffe, who has directed a number of short films of various lengths, says feature directing has its own set of challenges.

‘The logistical problems are exponential, the amount of personnel is incredible. Keeping a sense of the overall shape of the thing is difficult. But I have ended up with largely what I imagined in the beginning.’

Radclyffe’s circuitous route to filmmaking involved ‘six years of higher education in film and two years wasted in chemistry, with a year in between cleaning dinosaurs (at the Museum of Natural History).’

For all the darkness of the story, the crew seems as surprisingly sunny as the skies have been. Radclyffe says that, aside from a few continuity problems, the unpredictable East Coast weather has not been a big obstacle.

During breaks in shooting interiors in the studio, crew shine the chrome on the motorcycles used in the film’s action sequences, play guitar and generally hang out.

There is a pervasive bonhomie that seems to be tied directly to the location of the shoot. The cast acknowledge the difficulty of the roles yet are effusive about working in Nova Scotia, a first for all of them.

Watson, who has been working simultaneously on David Cronenberg’s Crash in Toronto, says the movie is ‘brutal,’ but enthuses about the crew and the experience as a whole.

Langrick, who says she prepared for the role of Rauchine by reading books on dysfunctional families given to her by Radclyffe, was also thrilled that the movie provided the unlikely opportunity to learn to ride a motorcycle.

Massey, a British stage and film actress with an aristocratic Canadian pedigree (her uncle was the country’s first Canadian governor-general, Vincent Massey, her father, Canadian actor Raymond Massey) and names like Hitchcock on her resume, says playing a Canadian with a regional accent was trying. Her dialogue coach worked with Helena Bonham Carter on Margaret’s Museum.

Massey is also enthusiastic about shooting in the province. ‘It’s an incredibly soothing place,’ she says, graciously proffering a ‘cough sweet.’

Radclyffe says the location wasn’t instrumental to the story, and was the result of his meeting Zimmer, but the choice turned out to be fortunate, even beyond the look of the film.

‘In the end it’s been good that it’s been shot in Canada,’ says Radclyffe. ‘I know quite a few Americans and I find the Canadian crew I’ve been working with easier going and just as efficient – they do have some sense of humor and irony that the Americans don’t possess.’

If Milburn’s character endures some unpleasant physical situations in the film, Milburn himself has endured his share of bodily hardship on set. In the second week of shooting, he received serious burns to his hand when it came into contact with the business end of a hot motorcycle and shortly thereafter broke his toe while shooting a running-through-the-woods-barefoot scene, causing considerable pain and the rescheduling of some action scenes.

Though knackered, Milburn is good-humored and says his first trip to North America has been a success, the crew ‘absolutely brilliant.’

He has plans to stay in the area for a week after shooting wraps to sit in on studio sessions and generally hang out with members of Lunenburg band Butterfield 8, whose music is featured in the film.

Milburn says he got a sense of involvement in this project, and like most, has taken full advantage of Haligonian hospitality. ‘After-hours has to be fun,’ says Milburn.