Award-winning novelist Helen Walsh is stepping behind the camera for a second time, Screen International reports. The English writer-director will follow up her 2015 debut “The Violators” with “The Lemon Grove,” an adaptation of her own best-selling 2014 novel of the same name.
“The Lemon Grove” centers on Jenn and Greg, a wife and husband whose annual summer holiday takes an unexpected turn when Greg’s teen daughter from a previous relationship joins the couple and brings along her new boyfriend. Jenn is drawn to the boyfriend, and finds it increasingly difficult to resist the temptation to explore the attraction.
Red Union Films, the production company behind “The Violators,” acquired the rights to adapt the book.
“The Violators,” a portrait of two dysfunctional teen girls, premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2015.
“The Lemon Grove” is set in Mallorca, and will film on the island next summer.
“‘The Violators’ showcased Helen Walsh as one of UK cinema’s outstanding new talents,” said Red Union Film’s David Moore. “We at Red Union are very happy to be teaming with Helen once more in bringing this wonderful and sensuous novel to the screen.”
Walsh added, “I’m excited at the prospect of bringing this sultry and transgressive love story to life. Mallorca is a filmmaker’s dream and I look forward to evoking its vistas, sunsets, cliffs, and coves — and its lemon groves, of course — on an even bigger canvas.”
