Lovers and other strangers: above left, Lily (Gina Gershon), the broker turned diamond smuggler, with Eddie (Mickey Rourke), the man who made her do it.

“I was really pleased about Lantos picking this film up because I knew he would give me more to work with on design, shooting time and particularly his contribution in casting stars,” says the young director. “I thought about my last four films and how they played at film festivals and indie theaters and thought, ‘It’s time for a film with broader appeal’.”

And how. By the time Lantos had finished working his magic, Picture Claire boasted a cast led by Juliette Lewis, Gina Gershon and Mickey Rourke, with Canadian stalwarts Kelly Harms and Callum Keith Rennie in support, and former British model Camilla Rutherford - star of Denys Arcand’s Stardom, which Lantos also produced - rounding out the line-up.

The producer is especially pleased about the casting of a top American actress as a Canadian. “Usually,” he says, “Canadian actors adapt their accents and mannerisms to play Americans. But we knew Juliette would nail this role.” For the accent, Lewis worked phonetically with dialogue coach François Grise, who taught her among other things a range of automatic responses to situations that would sound like a Québecoise. “As an actor, she has tremendous range and, in the movie, she looks like she is born in the East End of Montreal.”

Rourke, meanwhile, was more a matter of chance - or, perhaps, of serendipity. “He was our model for [the character of] Eddie,” says McDonald. “We never actually thought he would play the part, but we used him as the archetype to describe the kind of actor we were looking for. And then his agent called saying, ‘How about Mickey Rourke?’”

Picture Claire finally went into production in mid-October 2000 under the joint Serendipity Films/Alliance Atlantis banner. The idea behind it - that of someone completely cut adrift - may be a fairly simple one, but the plot is quite complicated. The central character is Claire Beaucage (Lewis), who has to leave Montreal in a hurry after her apartment is torched by a motorcycle gang. She heads for Toronto, where the only person she knows is a photographer called Billy Stewart (Kelly Harms), with whom she had a one-night stand. Despite speaking no English in emphatically English-speaking Toronto, Claire finds her way to Billy’s apartment. But he’s not home: taped to the door is a leaflet advertising an exhibition of his photographs. So Claire now has to find the gallery.

En route, Claire’s path crosses Billy’s downstairs neighbour, Lily (Gina Gershon), a former sharebroker who has become a diamond smuggler. (Gershon, puzzled by her character’s career choice, consulted a woman who worked as a broker on the Toronto exchange, and was given a completely credible scenario as to how a successful broker could be bullied into working outside the law).

Coincidentally, the two women end up in the same coffee shop where they both encounter Eddie (Rourke) - who then ends up dead. So, pursued by the dead man’s goons who think one of them is responsible, Claire and Lily again split off. Claire finally arrives at the gallery, only to discover that her one-night stand is the subject of Billy’s exhibition. And that isn’t the end: before long, Claire is hanging off the balcony of Billy’s apartment when his current girlfriend, Cynthia (Camilla Rutherford), unexpectedly shows up.