BBC Films to start shooting movie in Majorca

NEXT month BBC Films start shooting an emotional drama in the region of Deya and Soller starring Stanley Tucci, Rhys Ifans, Jessica Stevenson and Hugh Bonneville. The project “Four Last Songs” was recently presented in Cannes and is expected to hit the cinema screens early next year.
Producer Chris Collins and his pre-production team are now set up in the north of the island ready to start filming in the middle of next month.
The entire film will be shot along the north coast during a six-week shoot and local extras are going to be used.
The co-production is being made by Chris Collins's company Home Movies in association with Maté Films in Madrid and was been described by David Thompson, head of BBC Films in Cannes, as one of the “comic injections” the British film industry has recently prescribed after a recent run of very serious and tense UK productions. The script has been written by the BBC's highly acclaimed Ruth Caleb OBE and will be directed by Francesca Joseph who enjoyed major success with her film Tomorrow La Scala at Cannes two years ago. Collins said yesterday that the film is “an emotional drama with a comic element.” “Four Last Songs” is about ex-pat life in the Mediterranean.
Stanley Tucci plays an American resident in a Mediterranean location who decides to organise a concert in tribute to a former local composer. “It's about culture, life and music in a Mediterranean community and about the trials and tribulations Larry has to go through to organise this concert. “The film's about the various different mix of people from diverse nationalities who end up living in ex-patriate communities in the Mediterranean,” said Collins. “We will be exploring Larry's life on the island, the women, the problems etc. “Ifans and Bonneville will be playing two brothers who are part of the cultural circle he gets mixed up with while trying to stage this concert. “The plot is relatively complicated and is slightly more than a take on ex-pat life in the Mediterranean,” he added.
The production is going to be based in Deya and Soller although the location in the film will be a fictitious Mediterranean destination.
Stanley Tucci will be one of the most high-profile US actors to have made a film on the island in recent years.
Apart from great success on television, his first film role was in Prizzi's Honor in 1985 and he has since starred alongside leading actors and actresses in a host of top quality films including The Pelican Brief, Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Shall We Dance? and opposite Tom Hanks in The terminal as the head of immigration at JFK airport. Welsh actor Rhys Ifans caught the world's attention in Notting Hill posing for the world's press in his underpants outside Hugh Grant's house and parading down the stairs clad in just a t-shirt with a very suggestive question blazened across the back. Jessica Stevenson scooped the Best Comedy Actress at the British Comedy Awards in 2002.
In 2003 she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for her performance in The Night Heron.
More recently she starred in the Bridget Jones's Diary sequel.
Hugh Bonneville also starred in Notting Hill as well as the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997, opposite Kate Winslet in Iris.
More recently he is famous for his role in the sitcom The Robinsons.
Four Last Songs will be the second major feature film to be made on the island this year.
Timothy Hutton and David Kelly are currently coming to the end of shooting the Majorcan-directed sci-fi thriller The Kovac Boxon the island.