Coles is the kind of modern hero you’d never find in a Hollywood film: edgy, abrasive, not even particularly likeable - but far too interesting to ignore. “I think ultimately people find him sympathetic,” admits Chick, “but some of them have trouble getting to that place.” The other main cast members were just as little known at the time xx/xy was shot. Kathleen Robertson (Thea) had been a regular on Beverly Hills 90210, then veered sharply to the left to do a couple of films with Gregg Araki. She has since appeared in Scary Movie and recently landed a lead role in David E Kelley’s new Fox series, Girls’ Club. Maya Stange (Sam), meanwhile, won an Australian Film Institute Best Actress nomination for her role in In a Savage Land and has since starred in Alex Proyas’ Garage Days.

Robinson (above) in the college years and Petra Wright as Coles’ present-day partner, Claire (below)

“It was a tough shoot,” says Chick. “When we switched at the last minute from digital video to 35mm, the two departments that really stepped up were the art department and the camera department. We shot much of it in close-ups to try and give it a claustrophobic feel. It’s something that the DP and the production designer spent a lot of time talking about. We also watched a lot of other movies which is sort of what saved us when we were flying by the seat of our pants. We were walking into locations cold, but we all knew what we were looking for even though we hadn’t been able to do specific prep for a location. We had done enough general prep that we were all on the same page.”

The film was picked up for international distribution following Sundance by Senator International, the LA end of the go-ahead German independent producer/distributor, who were, says Chick, “very cool and very enthusiastic about the movie”. And a US release is currently being prepared for autumn 2002 through IFC. Chick, meanwhile, is preparing two future projects, including a studio movie “in the vein of comedies from the early seventies that had a melancholic undertone: movies about smart, neurotic people in uncomfortable situations.”

And what about the “smart, neurotic people” in xx/xy? How do they come out?

“Is it legitimate to say I don’t know?” queries Chick. “I sort of see a number of different outcomes for them. Do they live happily ever after? I don’t think so. But is the fact that there’s been this bomb dropped in the middle of the relationship a horrible thing? Maybe not. Maybe there’ll be some way for them to learn from it. I feel that relationships are such a complicated, delicate thing. One of the goals was to try to capture that: all the complicated messiness of it.”

This might be the moment to add that, when asked by the Sundance organisers to come up with a tagline for xx/xy, Chick suggested the following: “There’s no room for honesty in a healthy relationship.”