Olga Kurylenko, familiar with Terrence Malick's tendency to cut entire characters out of his movies completely, made him promise that he would keep her in the film.
Roger Ebert's review of this film was the last review he submitted before his death. It was published posthumously.
There was no script that was used during filming. Terrence Malick would give the actors pages of thoughts and independent lines every morning and he would ask them to play the emotions without speaking, just with their body.
Terrence Malick is following his semi-autobiographical turn in The Tree of Life with another film based on his own life experiences. Malick, like Ben Affleck's character of "Neil," had a romance with a woman in France in the 80s named Michèle Morette (like Kurylenko's character of "Marina"), married her in 1985, and then moved back to Texas with her. They divorced in 1998, however, and Malick reconnected with Alexandra "Ecky" Wallace, a former high school sweetheart (like McAdams' "Jane") from his days at St. Stephen's school in Austin, Texas.
Tatiana is the only character referred to by name on-screen, all other characters' names are revealed only at the end credits.