Production notes

The film project originated in 1990 at a Madrid restaurant where Fernando Trueba, Rafael Azcona, and José Luis García Sánchez frequently met to discuss cinematic projects. The story contains autobiographical elements for Trueba, as the director’s real-life father-in-law is named Manolo—just like the father-in-law of the protagonist, who shares the director's first name, Fernando. Before writing the screenplay, Trueba wanted to show Azcona and García Sánchez Jean Renoir’s Partie de campagne to illustrate the tone he envisioned for the film. From that movie—as well as from Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game—he drew the concept of main characters fleeing the city in search of a bucolic setting where primal instincts could surface. Trueba wanted the story set at the beginning of the Second Spanish Republic, a period that represented a fleeting moment of hope and the promise of paradise—a promise that soon vanished. He explained that he never intended the film to serve as a parable of that historical era, nor did he want the setting to evoke any specific region of Spain. A Spanish-Portuguese-French co-production, Belle Époque was produced by Fernando Trueba PC, Lola Films, Animatógrafo, and French Production with the collaboration of Sogepaq and Eurimages. The film was shot between July 5 and August 26, 1992 in several villages of Portugal. Trueba chose to shoot there because it was cheaper than filming in Spain (Trueba had a budget of only 160 million pesetas) and because the country had undergone fewer changes between that era and the present day. The house and village are located in Arruda dos Vinhos, the train station in Ríos, the church in Sobral de Monte Agraço, and the river in Azambuja. The soundtrack was conducted by Antoine Duhamel and performed by the Madrid Philharmonic Orchestra at Kirios Studios in Madrid in November 1992, while the songs were performed by Mary Carmen Ramírez.