The director admits he struggled to find interest among potential U.S. studio bosses – because no one wanted to watch Brody get intimate with a half-woman, half-creature, played by French actress Delphine Chaneac.
Natali says, “That scene was the reason I wanted to make the film and that’s why it’s such a miracle this film exists.
“No studio wanted to make it, because of (the) sexual part of the story. So we had to go to France. And the French, of course, had no problem with it.”
He tells Entertainment Weekly magazine, he carefully cast Chaneac as the half-woman Dren – because she was so appealing: “I felt she had an androgynous quality. I didn’t want to make Dren overtly sexual. I wanted people to fall in love with her rather than in lust. Also, I feel like an androgynous beauty is perhaps a little more evolved. Like David Bowie is maybe more evolved than the rest of us.
“I really think that Dren is an object of desire, but not in the most obvious sense.”
