The kiss that Parkhill is referring to is the moment in dot the i when the film appears to be developing into a conventional on-screen love triangle. "This very damaged girl comes to London, meets this sweet English guy who wants to marry her. She's had such screwed-up relationships in the past and for once she meets a man who is good to her, good for her. So she agrees. She does love her fiancé, but perhaps not as passionately as she might. And then on her hen night she goes to this French restaurant and partakes in a very peculiar French tradition, in which the bride-to-be gets to kiss one guy in the restaurant as a symbolic farewell to her single life. And so she kisses KIT and lightning strikes, awakening doubts about whether she really should be getting married at all."

"You suspect that you're in a fairly generic movie set-up but then as the story develops you realize that what's really going on is something else entirely."

Having nurtured the project for so long, and through various incarnations, Parkhill admits that he was incredibly lucky when it came to casting the eventual movie. "I wanted Gael for the part of KIT the moment I saw AMORES PERROS, but I remember thinking, how the hell am I even going to get in contact with him, let alone get the chance to meet him? Then I found out he was in London at that time, as he'd studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. So we sent him the script. He liked it, came in for a meeting and said he wanted to do the movie."

"At that point we didn't have the money and over the next six months or so, Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN was opening all over the world and not surprisingly more and more people were after Gael for their movies. But to his credit he stuck by us, and when we got the money he committed to the movie.'

Parkhill tweaked the character of KIT, so that he came from Brazil but had an English father and had moved to England several years previously. "I think that made it work better, because now he's more of an outsider, like CARMEN, whereas BARNABY is very much an inside, establishment figure."

"I was equally blessed in finding Natalia," continues Parkhill. "We went to Madrid to meet with a number of actresses, but as soon as Natalia walked into the room there was no question in my mind, she was CARMEN. She has an incredible range, she's quite simply a wonderful force of nature and that comes across on screen."

Perhaps, strangely, the quest for an actor to play BARNABY took much longer. "We wanted someone who appears to be playing on that very English movie stereotype; the sweet, wealthy, perhaps even a little bland, well-meaning character, but someone who could also make that switch into something very cold and calculating. James has that ability to play on both of those elements."

His first-choice cast secured, Parkhill could turn his attention to planning the look of the film. "I always wanted this film to have a really strong sense of color, of texture, a different feel in its lighting and to that end I always knew the DP I wanted, as I was a great fan of his work on LIVE FLESH and ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER." Parkhill is talking about the acclaimed Brazilian cinematographer Affonso Beato. "Of course I thought that for a low budget British film he was unreachable, but we sent him the script and I spoke to him on the phone, and he wanted to do it. So I went to L.A. to meet him and luckily the producers figured out a way to make it work. He has different eyes than I do, so he sees things in different ways and I think it's that joining of two unique ideas that leads to something different. And when you think that he made his first film the year I was born, well, it's pretty humbling. He's been a tremendous support to me."

In terms of shooting his first feature, Parkhill says: "I think the biggest challenge was actually learning to let go a little, let the writing go, to realize that you've got all these amazing people working around you, and part of your job as a director is to listen to them and encourage them to bring their own ideas to the film. Because, providing you've agreed on the direction in which you're going, that can only make the film better. Sometimes things work out in a way that is different from what you had in your head and most of the time, if you've chosen the right people, it's going to be better. As a director, you've got to trust the people you're working with, be it the actors, the DP, the production designer, the editor -- whoever. You've got to create an environment in which they feel encouraged to do their best work."

And there were times when scenes worked out exactly as Parkhill had imagined them so long ago. "A couple of scenes, like the flamenco dancing or the hen night were mindblowing because they were exactly as I imagined them when I was sitting alone in my room years ago, when I first started to write this thing, even before I knew I'd get a chance at directing it. But as a writer-director you have to be careful, because as important as it is to know what you want, if you stick to it too rigidly you can kill what other people can bring to it, kill the life of the thing. So I learned to let go a little and I was incredibly fortunate in that everybody rose to the challenge and I think did fantastic work."

As a director, Parkhill is enthusiastic about working with digital video. "Of the shorts I have made, the one I was most happy with was the one I made using DV. It gives you a lot of freedom, it's very liberating. And the way we use DV in the first half of this film hopefully gives the audience a sense that there is more to this story than meets the eye. It's a narrative choice rather than an aesthetic one, but it does add a whole different dimension to the feel and look of the movie."

Having made the film, Parkhill is now considering how audiences will receive it. "It's a difficult one, because there are so many different cross-genre and tonal elements to this film. Overall, it's meant to be fun. Primarily, I want it to entertain. There's romance, comedy and drama, but also it's pretty dark when you think about what's actually going on. I wanted to draw the audience into a certain kind of story whilst at the same time letting them know that something else is going on underneath and let them try and figure that out. Hopefully, the pay off is entertaining enough and satisfying enough that they don't mind that the movie they end up with is different from the one they thought they were starting out with. This film certainly takes you on a journey and the end point isn't where you thought you were going. It's also about having some fun with certain types of movies, with the whole generic love triangle/romantic set up. In this film, nothing is really what it seems. Nothing. For me, it's all summed in the scene where Theo talks about life being a movie. How many times in movies these days do characters reference other movies? Well, in life, too. Whatever we do or say, most of the time a movie's got there first and we're repeating a scenario that's already been acted out somewhere on the silver screen."

Nevertheless, twist or no twist, Parkhill says that for him dot the i has always been a love story. "Ultimately, it may be a very twisted love story, a very screwed up love story, but it still is a love story."

He says that he hopes that the film will be accessible for audiences everywhere. "I've always been influenced by all kinds of films, from America, South America, from France, Britain everywhere, so I don't see myself as making a film for a particular kind of audience. I mean, it might look like getting Gael and Natalia was a calculated piece of marketing but it wasn't at the time. It was simply that I thought they were right for the roles. I wanted to make the kind of film that, from the audience's point of view, it doesn't matter where you're from, you can still enjoy it."

dot the i is Matthew Parkhill's first feature film as writer/director. He has made three shorts--ROMEO THINKS AGAIN, TALK and IF I COULD--which have toured festivals worldwide, picking up several awards. He is a published poet and was included in the 1996 UNESCO World Poetry collection. His first novel was published in 1995. For several years he was a teacher, lecturing for four years at Poitiers University, France, and has worked extensively at the least glamorous end of American psychiatric institutions.

In addition to starring in BLACK HAWK DOWN and the acclaimed television series BAND OF BROTHERS, Tom Hardy has gained international recognition as the nemesis in STAR TREK: NEMESIS. He describes the film in one word - "Original." According to Hardy, "while some of the other characters are more in control of their actions, TOM and THEO are these naïve souls who see events unfolding around them just like the audience is meant to. They get themselves into a situation that they're not equipped to deal with so they are sympathetic, if not too bright, characters. Not that it is a straightforward story to follow!" He adds: "It's great that this film employs the talents of a group of very different young international actors. The new movie generation is coming through the ranks all the time, here and everywhere else, so it will be fun to see that mix in a film."

Charlie Cox, a former pupil of Sherborne School, where he won the Gerald Pitman Acting Award, makes his film debut with dot the i. He says: "Obviously, I've been spoiled getting to work with this group of people but having made the film I cannot imagine any scriptwriter letting someone else direct his work. I just don't see how that would work. Matthew cares so much about every aspect of the film and he has helped every member of cast."

The role of BARNABY is played by James D'Arcy, the young British actor known currently in the States for his role in Peter Weir's MASTER AND COMMANDER, starring Russell Crowe, and in the U.K. for his title role in the television production of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. D'Arcy's lengthy television biography includes ICE HOUSE, CANTERVILLE GHOST, SUNBURN and REBEL HEART. In film, he's featured in THE TRENCH, GUEST HOUSE PARADISO, REVELATION and WILDE.

D'Arcy said that he read an early draft of the dot the i script and was hooked when its writer and director Matthew Parkhill explained in some depth the plot twists he was in the process of polishing. "I immediately thought ‘Wow, this is really interesting, I want to commit to this straightaway.' The character is a really exciting challenge for an actor."

The BARNABY who audiences first meet is a young wealthy man who's fallen in love with a Spanish girl, CARMEN, to whom he's proposed almost immediately. For the first half of the film, we get caught up in the developing love triangle. Although BARNABY suspects that all is not entirely well in their relationship, he is still keen to marry her. Thus, with a real atmosphere of foreboding, the second half of the film unfurls.

D'Arcy says that the ensuing revelations about his character meant that he was directed almost as if he were two separate people. "I'd be having different sorts of conversations with Matthew depending on which other actors were in the room, which was kind of weird. The fun was that I got to explore both sides of my character and it was a challenge finding little subtleties and playing with them. I guess my job was really to try and meld all the aspects together and make one credible person. To an extent, though, we all do that in everyday life, depending on the company we're in -- guys behave in a different way with their girlfriends to the way they do with their mates -- so it's not completely outside of my frame of reference!"

With nothing exactly as it appears in the film, D'Arcy says he can understand that it may not be an easy film to categorize. "I heard somebody describe it as an urban love triangle which seems about fair on one level. But for me the appeal is that it keeps you on your toes. You never quite know what's going to happen next. In fact, better than that, you make certain assumptions about what will happen next and the film keeps twisting them on its head. It's very much a film about what we expect from films, and to that end it had to be quite sharp, quite new, quite different. That's what really appealed to me when I first read it, that you think you're in safe water, you think you know exactly what's going to happen -- in fact, the exact opposite happens, and something completely from left field comes in. And that's what attracted me to it in the first place, and I think that's what'll keep the audience into it."

Despite Director of Photography Affonso Beato's impressive credits and the multicultural cast and crew, D'Arcy says that Parkhill took the entire filmmaking process in his stride. "I thought Matthew was absolutely amazing. This is the first feature film he's directed but nobody would have known that from watching him at work. He has complete confidence in his script and because he's written it, he knows exactly how every element fits together. That was a real bonus because he was able to explain things to the cast very quickly. The atmosphere on set was great throughout. It was a multi-cultural crew and Gael and Natalia are both wonderful people and we spent a lot of time laughing. At first I didn't speak a word of Spanish, but I'm learning a little. I've never done anything like it before -- so hopefully audiences won't have seen anything like it."

Verbeke says she definitely identified with some aspects of her character. "She's just an ordinary girl who comes to London from Spain to start a new life and she falls in love with this guy BARNABY. Then she meets KIT and has all the usual self-doubts and dilemmas about what she wants out of life. I knew I would love making this film as soon as I finished reading the script. I mean, if I read a good script, if it keeps my attention, I know it will work. I was really excited about getting the role."

"CARMEN embodies real characteristics, her dilemma is very human. You can really be in love with somebody, and suddenly someone else can appear and your stomach churns up inside and you have nothing but doubt. There's a lot of passion inside CARMEN and she's a total mess because she just doesn't know what she should do. BARNABY has certain qualities that KIT doesn't have and vice versa, so it's like, ‘How do I choose?'"

Verbeke says that she found it hard preparing for the role because CARMEN is a very strong character. "There are different kinds of strength. I mean, I have a temper just like she has a temper, but she is strong in a different way. She's had a hard past that makes her react differently. Her reactions may at first seem strange to audiences, but at the end of the movie we see why she has behaved that way. To capture the essence of CARMEN required a lot of concentration and then I found myself becoming her, which was weird. For example, I found the scene when CARMEN gets married really intense. I've never got married before, either in a film or in real life, and I found it very suffocating. I was thinking, ‘This is too serious. I shouldn't be in a place like this!' I found myself thinking in character: that's exactly what CARMEN would have been thinking."

The most daunting part of the film for Verbeke was not the exchange of vows, but the scene where she dances flamenco. "If you're Spanish, people automatically assume that you must be able to dance flamenco. I did some flamenco dancing when I was a child but that was a long time ago. I was really worried about this scene, but I spoke to Matthew about it and we worked very closely with the choreographer for a few days. Nothing can make me feel shyer than dancing in a movie. It's like being naked on screen so I was really dreading it. In the end, though, everyone seemed happy with me so eventually I left the set feeling pretty proud of myself."

Like her co-stars, Verbeke is full of praise for Matthew Parkhill. "I loved working with Matthew, he's so cool and he was very open. I liked the fact that he wrote the script as well as directed the film because he knows the characters intimately. I got the impression that he probably has certain characteristics of each character in him. Having said that, he did let me improvise and gave me ideas to work with. He wasn't worried about changing things in the script when he thought that the actors could bring in something extra. The whole cast had a lot of fun on the set, even during scenes that had a lot of tension. I made a lot of good friends making this movie."

While Verbeke says she thoroughly enjoyed making her first British film she says that she doesn't feel that the final product is conspicuously British. "I think that dot the i has an international feel to it because of the nature of the cast and crew and there is nothing that I think of as particularly British about it. Anyway, passionate love stories have a universal appeal. I think audiences will enjoy the film because there's a lot going on -- there's love, there's passion, it is a thriller and it makes you laugh. Basically, people are going to think ‘What is going on here?' It will certainly keep people watching."

Bernal says he was particularly pleased to be offered the lead in dot the i as he says he is resolutely against the idea of being typecast. "I choose roles that I like and that I feel need to be told -- not because of what they're going to make me look like or where they are going to take me." When he read the dot the i script, he was immediately impressed with it. "I really got into it. In fact, I read it all in one go, which is pretty significant. When you read a lot of scripts you learn to quickly gain a sense of the structure and the rhythm -- basically, you know when something works or not. This one was interesting and fun, but also harrowing in a way. Then I met Matthew and one of the producers, Meg Thomson, and after speaking to them about the characters, I really wanted to do it."

"I like the fact that the characters are complex. You don't actually know what they are doing, even at the end," he adds. "There is a whole dimension about what is real and what is illusion, and that is very interesting because we are all so manipulated by the media in our everyday lives. We never really know for sure if what we are watching is real or not."

He says that one of the biggest challenges for him was acting in English. "That requires a lot of discipline -- to get across what I want to get across in English, I found that I needed to concentrate on little things that normally come to me naturally."

He thinks that KIT is one of the most rounded characters he has played so far. "I think the character has many more qualities and knows more things than you see in the script. He's just a kid, an unaccomplished actor who gets caught up in events probably because he's a good person and he's probably a bit lonely. I think that in the course of the film, he loses a kind of innocence. He falls into something he knows that he can't get out of, and crosses the point of no return."

Bernal is fulsome in praise for the dot the i writer-director Matthew Parkhill. "It was really nice working with someone who is a very kind and loving person, who trusts you and admires you as well. I'm happy to be part of this project and have him leading the way. He knows exactly what the story is about, he's seen it so many times in his mind and he wrote it thinking about how it would look. Working with a writer who directs gives the actors a lot of confidence that allows us to work in a much freer way. He is very controlled, very measured -- but he also has a little anarchy and that works in filmmaking."

"I know everyone involved describes the film as an urban love triangle but I think it is much more than that. It is really a cute way of showing that perceived reality isn't always how it appears. That's what's interesting about this movie, that ambivalence. The film's very difficult to describe, but it's very absorbing."