With ORANGES AND SUNSHINE, director, JIM LOACH is making the transition from television to feature films. Rave reviewer, TIM MILFULL finds out whether the son is following the footsteps of his famous father.

Jim Loach’s father, Ken has made a career out of telling poignant and sometimes confronting stories that give a voice to the disenfranchised. With the recent release of Jim’s film, Oranges And Sunshine –which tells the story of Britain’s rather ruthless child migrant program – it’s an impossible challenge not to ask how great an influence the father has been on the son.

“It’s very difficult to answer that, to be honest. Definitely, he is an influence, of course. For a start, all parents obviously influence their children, don’t they? Mine’s no different in that respect. There’s definitely an influence in a kind of general way –we were always encouraged to read a lot of books, and be very sort of outward-looking on the world, and just be very engaged in stuff that was going on. We swap a lot of ideas and thoughts all the time, so I think he definitely is an influence.”

And despite the fact that Loach admits he did speak to his dad about the new film, there are other, more important matters to be discussed regularly, “I showed him the script, and then he gave me a couple of thoughts. Then he came into the cutting room and he gave me a few suggestions. Obviously, at least about half of them we didn’t do because any dutiful child has to ignore at least half their parents’ advice – it kind of goes with the territory.  But we did use quite a few of them. To me, it’s not a big deal – I’ve got to be honest. He’s just my dad, and we talk all the time. I mean, we talk about football first, then we talk about films.”

The seed for Oranges And Sunshine was planted in 2003, when Loach read Margaret Humphreys’s book, Empty Cradles, “I just went to see her. We talked for ages, and I knew straight away that it was a film I wanted to make, because I sat opposite this woman who had such an incredible story to tell. For me it was that straightforward –she was clearly kind of a heroic figure, and had a huge personal dilemma; she was out trying to reunite families that had been split up, but at the same time, she was a working mother trying to keep her own family together. I was really struck by that, and the wider story too seemed completely compelling to me.”

After collaborating on the script with Rona Munro, Loach set about casting, first calling on Emily Watson to take on the role of Margaret Humphreys – the tenacious social worker who took on a task that so many others had avoided – then Hugo Weaving as the shattered former child migrant, Jack, and David Wenham in a strangely complex role, “Rona had met a former child migrant in Perth, and quite quickly she was inspired to start to create the character of Len. What was brilliant about him was that he was the reverse of everything you would expect. He’s obviously emphatically not a victim – he’s not interested in being that sort of person, and we were fascinated by the fact that Margaret goes to meet these people and they all want her help, but Len is the one person who doesn’t; it seemed to us this would be an interesting way to explore their relationship.”

While Weaving was keen to meet the man his character was based on, Loach and Watson wavered over a meeting with Humphreys, “She didn’t really need a huge amount of prior knowledge to experience it as she went along. Obviously, she had to understand what it would be like to be a social worker in Nottingham, so she did a lot of research around that, and she did a watch some tapes of Margaret. But we wanted her to let the story unfold as if she was a detective along the way – it happened quite naturally. Emily had played real people before because she was in Hilary And Jackie, and I think she got her fingers a bit burnt by that experience; that’s why she felt this time she’d do it differently.”

Unsurprisingly, even as the production wrapped, Margaret Humphreys has continued on with her race to reunite families, offering stoic acknowledgement to Loach that his beautiful film will only increase the flood of former child migrants looking for their lost loved ones. “What’s been brilliant for us is the audience reaction to the film – they take it as a really inspirational, uplifting film. Ultimately, this is a story about a woman who didn’t walk away.”

ORANGES AND SUNSHINE opens Thursday Jun 9. Check out www.facebook.com/orangesandsunshine for more info.

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