In a French interview, director Anh Hung Tran says he couldn't stop crying when he read the original novel, "L'Elégance des veuves" by Alice Ferney. Because his parents took him and his brother to France at the end of the Vietnam War, he has lost contact with the rest of his family.
This is only Hung's second movie in which his wife Nu Yên-Khê Tran is not screen acting. In Norwegian Wood (2010) she was the costume designer, in Eternity (2016) she is both the art director and the voice-off.
Because Jonny Greenwood was unavailable, director Anh Hung Tran decided to pick a few dozen classical compositions among the hundreds he has known all his life.